


Home

by Hana_Noiazei



Series: Trofilos [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: APH Casino Duo, Bakery AU, Baking, Cooking, East Asian Family, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Pining, Romance, Slow Burn, Slow To Update, restaurant AU, there's a lot of pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-23 20:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 38
Words: 63,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20346568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hana_Noiazei/pseuds/Hana_Noiazei
Summary: Vicente remembers the lights that shone within the city he was born in, and the darkness he and his family have been dragged through in his eighteen years of life. Having jumped from home to home the moment he was born, he prays, he hopes for a place he can settle down in, as bright and beautiful as his birthplace.





	1. Where The Lights Were

The city of Macau never slept, and neither did Vicente.

His brother told him of how he, as a baby, would stay up for hours, staring out the window at the street lamps and billboards through his crib with wide eyes. Vicente didn't remember much about Macau except for those lights, shining like stars even when the clock struck midnight. They were such a stark contrast from his brother Yao, who had eyes like pools of ink that always twinkled in the night.

One night, Yao had scooped him up from his crib and carried him, grunting from his weight, to look out the window and into the night. "Look," he'd whispered in his accented Cantonese, "look at where we are. It's huge, isn't it? When you grow bigger, Mother and Father will take us out there, and we'll walk and walk until we know this place like the back of our hands."

He told him a story another night, under the soft glow of Vicente's night-light. "Before you were born, Mother, Father and I lived in Beijing," he'd said, "and it was nothing like Macau. The nighttimes were always dark, and I don't think anybody walked in the streets after sunset. This is far more beautiful, don't you think?

Yao spoke to him like that almost every night, sitting by his crib and talking. He remembered Yao saying once, when he was almost two years old, "Mother made us egg tarts today for dessert. One day, she'll teach me how and we can eat them together, while walking through the streets. We'll buy books in that new bookstore that opened up nearby, and then play in the park."

He helped Vicente towards the window and pointed at a particularly bright building. "Do you see that? That building is called the Venetian. I heard that the inside looks like a castle, and a river runs through it! We'll go there as well, and we can ride boats on the river and pretend to be princes."

That day never came.

When Yao turned six years old, the Wang family bundled into a ferry and sailed away from Macau. Away from the blinding lights, away from the quiet lullabies and bedtime stories.

His brother Leon was born soon after Vicente turned two, in an apartment within the heart of Hong Kong. The nighttimes were different there, with the curtains drawn in his bedroom and Leon's wails splitting the air every hour. Yao never stayed with him, and with him went the quiet radiance that he remembered from his two short years in Macau.

Vicente remembered much more of Hong Kong, of shouting shopkeepers in markets and shopping malls filled with chattering people. He remembered sesame rolls that looked like film and curry-filled puff pastries, cold tea and warm milk and everything in between.

Not much was quiet any more — not the deafening hustle and bustle outside home, not the nonsensical babbling of his younger brother, definitely not the conversations his parents had after dinner in their bedroom. Vicente never understood what his parents were talking about, although snatches of the discussions told him they were about Leon and a man from England.

He watched Yao and his mother cook, preparing everything from steamed eggs to potstickers. He was let into the kitchen for the first time on his third birthday. Yao gave Vicente a spoon and a bowl of chives and instructed him to spoon the chives into the bubbling pot of soup on the stove, while he kneaded the dough and pulled it into thin strands. His mother, busy wrapping wontons, had not noticed Vicente and his brother dropping egg noodles into the soup and finishing the rest of the dish together.

His father proclaimed that day's dinner to be the best he'd ever had.

He never got a second chance to cook in Hong Kong.

Vicente's first time on an airplane was when he was almost four years old, when the family left Hong Kong and took off for a different country. Taiwan was so different from Hong Kong and Macau, and Vicente had never seen any place like it.

He barely understood the rapid Mandarin that people spoke, and he saw no lights out from the window of the apartment at night. Yao was the only one out of the three brothers who fit in perfectly, with his flawless Mandarin that Vicente could barely speak.

Their mother was barely at home, and with their father at work Yao had to take up the role of caretaker. Dinners were, more often than not, nothing but steamed rice and the occasional omelette. Their father would come home hungry and disappointed at the meagre servings, and they would fuss over one-year-old Leon and wonder where their mother went.

The answer came when Vicente's sister was born.

Yue Ling, nicknamed "Ling", was nothing like the rest of her family. Her eyes were a deep, glittering gold and, like Leon, she had glossy brown hair instead of Yao and Vicente's black locks. Their father soon went to his wife and confronted her about Ling's strange appearance, but he never got an answer.

"You look just like your father," their mother had once whispered while rocking Ling to sleep. Vicente, busy peering at a book, had barely heard it. But it was clear that Ling and her father were like day and night, and as Vicente glanced back and forth from his sister to his father, he noticed how he stared at Ling like she was some sort of stranger.

He nearly forgot about it, as he graduated kindergarten and went on to primary school. Their mother continued to disappear mysteriously, and Yao was weighed down by both schoolwork and the burden of taking care of his three siblings. Vicente soon joined Yao in cooking, cleaning and tutoring, crashing into bed half-asleep and waking up the next day praying he wouldn't fall asleep in class.

His first year of primary school passed quietly, even though he barely had the energy to study. Ling started going to kindergarten and their mother was home even less, leaving Yao and Vicente dead on their feet as they continued to work and work and work.

Then the days were barely quiet. On the rare occasion that their mother was home after Yao and Vicente returned from school, she would fly into arguments with their father behind closed doors and at night, when they thought the siblings were asleep.

Once, during a particularly nasty fight, Leon had went crawling into Vicente's bed, sniffling and covering his ears. He'd shifted over and covered his brother with his thin blanket, trying his best to think of what Yao would do and patted Leon's head. "Y-You'll be fine," he'd tried to say, handing Leon a piece of tissue. "We'll be fine."

Vicente had tried his best to sound honest, lying there awkwardly as Leon cried in his arms and their parents shouted and screamed outside the room.

They had drifted off to sleep holding each other, hiding under the blanket in an attempt to block out the sounds of conflict.


	2. Invisible

_Wang Jia Lin, Year 3, Class 2. Rank: Fourth._

The report card was all-black, without a red mark in sight. It was nothing new since Vicente had started primary school. His marks were always nearly perfect, just a few marks away from the best. He accepted the report card with a quiet "thank you", returning to his seat. _Yao always gets the best in the class,_ he thought, staring at the numbers._ I wonder why I can't._

The top three scorers were jumping around the classroom with hoots of joy, classmates crowding around them with words of congratulations. Vicente ignored them and stowed the report card at the very back of his folder.

He knew the routine well — wait until both his parents were home, pray they wouldn't get into an argument and give them the report card. Watch as they barely scanned it, muttering a "nice job" and signed it, probably in the wrong place.

When he pulled out his report card from its spot of shame, though, it appeared that Leon had beat him to their parents' spot on the sofa.

As he waited in a chair with a book, Vicente peered at Leon's report card.

_Wang Jia Long, Year 1, Class 3. Rank: Eighteenth._

_Oh._

He watched as his parents stared at the report card with growing disappointment, frowning at Leon while pointing to his marks. "A failing mark?" Their mother almost shouted, "Leon, we thought you were doing well in math."

"I was," Leon protested, crossing his arms. "The exam was hard, that's all."

They signed the report card with scowls, pushing the pen so hard it almost broke the paper. Leon went back into his room without a sound.

His parents glanced at his marks and his rank without a word, saying nothing except for a quiet "great" upon seeing his mark in General Studies. They signed it (miraculously in the right place), gave it back to him and went back to bickering.

The little black "4" stared back at him mockingly.

His brother looked up at Vicente from his desk when he went into their room, doodling idly in his exercise book. "Bet you got top of the class like Yao."

Vicente didn't bother speaking, only shaking his head before flopping soundlessly on his bed and staring at his ceiling light. Part of him wanted to grab his report card, write a "1" next to his rank so maybe his parents would at least react more. But again, maybe they'll be the same whether I get a four or a fourteen.

From Ling and Yao's bedroom, he could hear his sister singing, probably rehearsing the song for her kindergarten graduation performance. With a sigh, he got up from his bed and left his room.

Yao opened the door for him, one hand still holding a folder. "You did great this year," he said, "in the top five again."

He shook his head and walked in, glancing at Yao's paper-covered desk. "You're always the first. I'll never be as good as you."

His brother gestured to his desk, taking care to dodge Ling. "Ah, but that's because all I do is study. Ever since I started secondary school, I've never slept before twelve o'clock in the morning!" He laughed. "You have good marks and a good life, Vicente. You're in the baking club and you have friends. I don't, because all I have are my marks."

Ling ended her little performance with a curtsy and turned to Vicente. "I heard that Brother got eighteenth."

"It's Leon's first year in primary school," Vicente defended, "so he's got to have trouble starting out. Next year, you'll have to go to school with us, so you need to work hard too, okay?"

She nodded in the way that all five-year-olds nod, jokingly and a sure sign that she hadn't been listening. "Would you like to listen to me sing?"

And how could he say no?

Vicente sat down on Yao's desk chair as his sister started to sing again, accompanying her show with dance moves and ended with a bow and a face-splitting smile. "My performance is next week!" She proclaimed, soaking in her brothers' polite applause. "So you have to come and watch!"

"We will, we will." Yao glanced at the clock on the wall, its hands showing the time to be almost nine o'clock. "Now, it's almost time to go to bed, Ling. You won't be able to sing and dance if you're all tired."

"Aww." Ling pouted, flopping onto her bed.

"Say 'goodnight' to Vicente."

Ling stuck her tongue out at Yao, blowing a raspberry. "Goodnight."

Vicente fought the urge to laugh. "Goodnight, Ling."

After she'd burrowed under the blankets and drifted off to sleep, Yao beckoned for Vicente to follow him out of the room. He was smiling, but Vicente could see the bags under his eyes and how his shoulders slumped as he leaned against the bedroom door. "I doubt that Mother and Father will take us to Ling's performance."

"You'll find a way to get there anyway," Vicente said, "or we will. We can sneak our way into Ling's school to watch her. You, me and Leon. As long as we're back before Mother and Father are home, they won't know a thing."

Yao smiled patronisingly, reaching to ruffle his hair. "Are you sure we can? After all, Ling's school is quite far away."

"We'll find a way," Vicente insisted.

Laughing at his brother, Yao smiled even wider. "Of course you will, Vicente."

…

Two days later, Vicente showed up in Yao's bedroom holding a map. "Yao," he said, "I figured out how to get to Guoliang Kindergarten."

Wide-eyed, Yao let Vicente into his room and lay his map on his desk, pointing at a circled station. "After school, we can walk to this station and take the Zhonghe-Xinlu Line until here," he pointed at another station, "and switch to the Tamsui-Xinyi Line, take the metro for one more station. After that, it's only a five-minute walk to Guoliang."

"Oh," was all Yao could say, while Vicente swelled with pride at having thought of the plan himself. "This is very clever. Did your class teacher help you?"

"No, she didn't." Vicente tried his best not to smile. "I took the map from my General Studies textbook and looked up the places in a library book. Nobody helped me."

It felt good seeing Yao stare at the map, looking prouder than he'd ever been. "It's lovely that you managed to think of this," he said slowly, "but I'm afraid we still can't go to Ling's graduation ceremony."

Vicente stared at him. "But why not?" He gestured at the map again. "We know how to get to Guoliang Kindergarten, and it only takes twenty minutes to get there. You, me and Leon can just go after school, and go home with Ling after the performance."

Yao bent down to look at Vicente, smiling sadly. "I'm sorry, Vicente, but we just don't have the time. I have to study for my summer courses, and I'm sure that with his new tutorial lessons, Leon won't be able to go either."

"Oh." He felt his heart sink. "All right." He folded up his map and picked it up, slowly making his way out of the bedroom.

On the way back to his room, Vicente almost knocked over Ling. His younger sister stepped back and smiled at him, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she chirped, "my performance is five days after today!"

"I know." Vicente tried his best not to sound sullen. "You must be practicing very hard for it."

Ling nodded, even though Vicente doubted that she knew what he meant. "You have to come to watch, okay?"

And she skipped off, humming a tune. Vicente thought of how much Ling had talked about her performance, how she sang and danced in her room every night and had him, Yao and Leon abandon their work to watch her, then of how none of them would see her on stage.

Except him.


	3. Unseen

"Remember, I stayed behind after school to help Ms. Lin with decorating the classroom."

Leon rolled his eyes, swinging his art bag as he walked. "Yeah, okay. You've told me ten thousand times already."

Vicente smiled and caught a stray paintbrush that flew out of Leon's bag. "Thank you, Leon. Are you sure you don't want to come along?"

"Nah. Mother will kill me if I skip my math tutorials," he grumbled, "she must think my grades are more important than my sister." Leon looked at Vicente. "Are you going to take photos?"

"I'm going to see if I can buy any." Vicente pulled his purse out of his pocket. "I brought some pocket money."

They reached the school gates, and Leon went off to the nearby bus station, waving at Vicente as he left. "See you tonight."

According to the map in his social studies textbook, the nearest metro station was only a block away from his school, and Vicente managed to reach it after five minutes, thankful that his school bag was light. He followed his plan and switched lines two stations later, arriving at Guoliang Kindergarten with ten minutes before Ling's performance was to begin.

He scurried around excited parents and fussing teachers, careful not to push over the tiny kindergarteners milling around his feet, and followed the line into the school hall.

Teachers were standing outside the entrances, accepting what looked like slips of paper from the adults' hands. As he neared, Vicente noted the bold words on every slip of paper: "**_TICKET_**".

An expectant hand was held out in front of him.

Vicente looked up at the teacher, who stared back with tired eyes and a bored half-smile. "Do you have a ticket, young man?"

He shook his head.

"Well, then, I'm going to have to ask you to - "

"Please," Vicente interrupted, "even if I can't have a seat, may I at least stand?"

The teacher looked at him for a while before sighing. "Stand at the back, then. You should still be able to see the stage from there."

Relief flooding through him, Vicente muttered a quick "thank you" to the teacher before making his way into the hall and standing against the wall. The rest of the parents passed him without looking, engrossed in conversation and flipping through the programme. He looked at the stage, at the colourful set and the bouquets lining the side, and awaited the performance's beginning.

Soon, a swell of music began to blare from the speakers as the hall dimmed, the spotlights glowing like lanterns. A row of kindergarteners walked out onto the stage, some of them waving at their parents. Bouncing behind her classmates was Ling, dressed in a lacy crimson dress and smiling brightly enough to light up the world.

The audience burst into applause. Vicente smiled at his sister (though he was quite sure she couldn't see him), clapping and clapping until his hands felt like they were going to fall off. He thought of cheering, like he always did for Leon during his sports competitions, before deciding otherwise. _None of the grown-ups are cheering anyways._

A middle-aged woman, presumably the headmistress, stood behind the podium. Beaming, she addressed the audience. "Parents, teachers and esteemed guests, we are gathered here today to celebrate the graduation of some very talented young boys and girls. Now, it's time for them to move on to a new stage of life." She turned to the cluster of students. "Children, I wish you all the best in your school life, and I do hope that we'll meet again!"

The audience, once again, burst into applause.

Vicente watched as the headmistress ambled to the side of the stage, where a teacher was standing with a handful of diplomas. He watched as every student walked their way to the headmistress, shaking her hand, grinning and accepting the diploma. He clapped politely for each of them, listening as the photographer's camera snapped proud photos.

"From class C, Wang Yue Ling."

Ling traipsed towards the headmistress, shaking her hand eagerly and taking the diploma. She took the roll of paper with one hand, spun towards the audience and smiled toothily, bowing.

Snap. The photographer took a photo of her.

Not caring if the grown-ups glared at him, Vicente jumped up and down, clapping and waving his arms at Ling. Thankfully, nobody cast him any glances, but Ling waved back, much to the audience's amusement.

The polite applause returned, and Ling made her way off the stage.

For ten more minutes, the rest of the kindergarteners walked on stage to receive their diplomas. When the last student from class E stepped down the stairs with a face-splitting grin, the master of ceremonies returned on stage. "These children have all worked very hard for this very day, and it's time to reap the fruits of their labour! Now we present class A and their short drama of 'Cinderella', so please give them a huge round of applause!"

Vicente stood patiently as class A played out their drama, checking his battered old watch as he prayed for the show to be over. And as the twenty five-year-olds bowed to clicks of the camera and whoops from their parents, he cast another glance at his watch. _4:23._

Exactly one hour and thirty-seven more minutes until his parents were to return home.

Five minutes and one skit from class B later, it was finally time for class C to perform. Vicente couldn't help smiling as he saw Ling, walking out of backstage with a spring in her step. Once she took her place, standing at the centre of the stage and teetering as she stood, her bright eyes began to roam around the hall.

When her eyes met Vicente's, they lit up.

And he forgot Yao's apologetic smile, Leon's derisive nonchalance, his parents' ignorance. When the music began to play and Ling started her dance, practically radiating joy, he wondered, though he hated himself for it, how disappointed she'd look if she hadn't been able to see him.

But those thoughts soon faded away with the happy-go-lucky music, and he found himself clapping along to the rhythm as Ling spun, hopped and twirled on stage. No longer was she dancing in her cramped, dimly-lit bedroom wearing her ratty school uniform, but in a fancy concert hall with her new dress. _But it makes no difference,_ Vicente thought,_ she's happy all the same._

At the very end, when Ling stood with her classmates and curtsied daintily, he cheered alongside everyone else.

…

The rest of the ceremony passed in a blur, speeches and sharings droning on and on until Vicente's watch read 5:30 and he found himself being pushed by the sea of parents walking out of the hall. One hand clutching his bags, he stumbled out of the hall and into the school courtyard, searching the group of students for his sister.

"Brother!"

Seemingly out of nowhere, Ling slammed into him, wrapping her arms around him in a bear hug. "You'rehereyou'rehereyou'rehere!"

He dropped his bags, awkwardly patting Ling's head. "Hi," he said, "I, er, saw your performance. You were great."

She tugged at one of the ribbons tying at her pigtails, giggling. "It's better than when I did it at home, right? Did you clap?"

"Of course I did."

"Did Yao and Leon clap, too?" Ling looked around, her smile faltering just slightly. "Where are they? Where are Mother and Father?"

Unwilling to tell her the truth, Vicente took her hand and steered her into the hall. "Do you know if we can buy photos yet?"

"Um…" Ling teetered back-and-forth. "I think Mr. Chan said that we will get photos tomorrow. No need to buy them."

"Oh. All right, then." He dropped his purse back into his bag. "That's good. Do you want to stay and talk to your friends, or do you want to lea — "

At the corner of his eye, Vicente caught the jet-black blazer of Yao's school uniform. Then he caught Leon's favourite red bag, his father's briefcase.

Before he knew it, Yao was striding into the hall, one hand still holding his math textbook and the other windmilling around. "Vicente!" He grabbed his shoulders, the textbook falling to the floor. "You — you actually — I never thought you were serious!"

He opened his mouth to say something. Nothing came out.

"I was _so_ worried when you didn't come home, even after Leon finished his tutorials, then I thought of Ling and her performance and how you wanted to watch her, and my goodness, Vicente, you could've at least told me!"

"But you said you couldn't come along," Vicente said, finding his voice, "and Leon had lessons, so I decided to go alone."

Yao rubbed at his temples and bent down to pick up his fallen textbook. "Don't run off on us next time, okay? You scared me half to death! Now let's go." He marched off with their parents, Leon staring off into space and Ling talking a mile a minute. "Time to go home."

Vicente trudged out of the hall and away from Guoliang, the chatter of parents and children suddenly ear-splitting. As he sat down in his parents' car, he noticed his mother's hand on Ling's shoulder, his father lecturing Leon on his latest quiz scores, Yao's eyes poring over his textbook.

Not a glance at him.


	4. Away and Astray Again

"How is primary school like?"

Scrawling down another sloppy answer in his exercise book, Leon shrugged. "It's harder than kindergarten."

"I _know_ that," Ling said indignantly, "everyone says that."

Leon rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay, it's harder because you have more classes. There's social studies and stuff, and you have to take tests, and there's a lot of homework. Oh, and you can't play much."

Ling pouted, watching as Leon roughly slammed his exercise book shut and tossed it into his backpack. "Primary school doesn't sound fun."

"It's not," Leon muttered under his breath.

"I don't want to go to primary school," she declared, placing her hands on her hips, "I'm going to stay in kindergarten forever and ever."

Hidden behind a stack of textbooks, Vicente highlighted a line in his textbook with bright yellow ink. "Primary school is tougher than kindergarten," he said quietly, "but it's also more fun. You'll make lots of new friends and learn lots of new things."

"Really?"

Vicente rummaged through his pencil-case for another highlighter. "Really. Social studies is interesting, and you get to play lots of games in sci — "

A deafening "_SLAM_" echoed throughout the apartment and made them all jump. Vicente dropped his highlighter and crept towards his parents' room, wincing at another "_BANG_" and a flurry of shouts.

He didn't understand half the things his father was yelling, things about "sleeping around" and "being disloyal" and, strangest of all, "bringing home another brat". Taking a deep breath, Vicente raised one hand to knock on their door when Yao burst out of his room, looking half-dead with exhaustion.

"Ah, they're fighting again?" Yao forced a smile and pushed Vicente away from the door, leading him back to the dining room. "And right after Father's back from work, too." He looked at the clock, tugging at his blazer. "_And_ it's already seven o'clock. We should start making dinner, Vicente."

And that was his cue. Closing his half-highlighted textbook and shoving it back into his school bag, Vicente followed Yao into the kitchen. He bit back a sigh and put his slippers back on. _Looks like I'll have to finish my work tomorrow morning._

The next hour saw the brothers washing vegetables, steaming rice and frying eggs, trying desperately to put together a decent meal. Yao and Vicente flurried around the kitchen, spilling sauces and dropping peels as the clock ticked away.

While reaching for the bottle of oyster sauce, Vicente bumped his wrist against a vegetable-filled pan and stifled a yelp of pain. He ran the burn under the sink, staring dejectedly at the red stripe forming on his wrist. _How am I going to explain this tomorrow?_

"Brother," he called while wiping his wrist dry, "can you pass me a bandage, please?"

No reply.

He looked around the kitchen, at the still-cooking rice and the meat in the steamer. Yao was nowhere to be seen. "Brother?"

Nothing.

He switched off the stove and reached for a dish, arms straining to take the porcelain plate from the cupboard above his head. Vicente spooned the pan of Chinese cabbage into the plate and drizzled oyster sauce over it, before turning off the steamer and grabbing a pair of metal claws to retrieve the bland-looking steamed pork. His hands shook as he placed the heavy dish on the countertop.

Running outside, Vicente saw Leon and Ling poring over a book. "We had to read this for English class this year," Leon said, "it's about the beach." He looked up, noticing Vicente wrapping a bandage around his wrist. "Oh, hi."

Rubbing his sore wrist and smiling like Yao often did when he was tired, Vicente gestured vaguely at the table. "Dinner's ready. Can you clear the table?"

He brought out the vegetables and meat wearing heat-proof gloves too large for him, then steaming bowls of rice that scorched his fingers.

Ling tapped at the table. "Where are the place mats?"

Blowing on his numb fingers, Vicente scurried back to the kitchen to grab the mats from a drawer.

After slipping place mats under each bowl of rice, he ran back again for the chopsticks and spoons, only to see Leon already carrying six pairs of chopsticks and fragile porcelain spoons out of the kitchen. "Thank you, Leon."

Leon only gave him a pat on the shoulder (poking him in the face with a chopstick in the process) as he set the table.

As the three of them took their seats, Yao came out of his room with a bandaged hand. "I'm sorry I left you to finish up, Vicente." He sat down and yawned, poking at the bloody bandage. "I cut myself while chopping the cabbages."

Suddenly, the burn on his wrist felt less painful.

Vicente shifted in his seat, looking at their messily-thrown together dinner and waiting for his parents to finally leave their bedroom. Their rice was just starting to turn cold when they arrived at the dining room, standing a good distance apart and not talking to each other.

"Good evening," their mother said as she sat down.

Their father was silent.

"The food looks lovely." Their mother reached over Ling to take a piece of meat. "You're such a talented chef, Yao. By the way, I'm sorry I haven't been able to cook recently."

"Maybe if you hadn't spent your time seeing other men, you would've had time to cook for them," their father finally said.

Their mother slammed her hands on the table, shooting her husband a murderous glare. "What I do is none of your business!"

"You're abandoning the children and lying to me!" Their father exclaimed back. "That's completely my business, you — "

"Ling's graduation photos came out today," Yao interjected, "Ling, why don't you go get them and show Mother and Father?"

Clearly sensing another argument, Ling slipped quietly out of her chair and skipped towards her bedroom.

"Vicente," Yao continued, "Ling's graduation ceremony was just a week ago, and you were the only one who managed to go watch her. How was it?"

Only just stopping a comment on how Yao hadn't wanted him to go to the ceremony from slipping out, Vicente replied, "her class did a dance performance. Ling wore that new dress we saved up for, too."

"And she stuck her certificate to the wall," Leon added, his mouth full of rice.

Ling returned to the dining room, proudly showing off three snapshots of her on stage. "Mr. Chan said that I danced good!"

Their father took a photograph of Ling mid-dance, crimson dress shining in the flash-light of the camera. "Very nice."

"You must have danced beautifully," their mother remarked, "when I was your age, we didn't get to dance during our graduation ceremony."

She swallowed a mouthful of cabbage and blinked at their mother. "Not even in primary school?"

Their mother smiled indulgently. "Back in my day, graduation ceremonies were boring. They just gave us our certificates, then we went home. You all are very lucky to have such interesting ceremonies."

"Ohhh." Ling nodded. Next to her, their father muttered something about an epic graduation party their mother had dedicated an entire photo album to.

"During my graduation ceremony, I had to deliver a speech," Yao said, "and I remember standing on stage, in front of everyone, all shaking and scared. I nearly fell down the stairs as I left! But hearing all those people clap when I was done, that was amazing."

Vicente leaned forward, eager to be included. "And when I had to deliver my speech, I nearly forgot my lines. In the middle of my speech, Leon even started crying from a stomach-ache."

"Hey!" Leon said indignantly.

"Leon," Ling asked, setting her chopsticks down, "what did you do when you graduated?"

"He tripped over his shoelaces during his performance."

Leon kicked Vicente under the table.

Their father cleared his throat. "Ling, are you excited for primary school?"

She nibbled on her fried egg, looking around at her brothers. "Leon said that primary school was hard, but Vicente said it was fun. Who's wrong?"

"I'm right," Leon said, "primary school has loads of homework and evil teachers. Vicente only says it's fun because he gets good grades."

"Don't scare her."

"It's true!" He waved his chopsticks around as he spoke. "You know, one time my class teacher caught me talking to my seat-mate, and she made me stay behind to write 'I will not disturb my classmates', fifty times!"

Ling shuddered. "That sounds scary."

"Don't you worry." Yao looked pointedly at Leon. "As long as you're good, and do all your homework, the teachers won't punish you. My old class teachers in the primary division were terribly nice to me, too."

"Yes, well…" their mother sighed, taking a short glance at their father. "You won't be able to join Leon and Vicente in primary school this September."

Leon was the first to react. "Why?"

"This August, we're leaving Taipei," their mother announced, "we'll be off to another country, somewhere in the West, and we'll have a new home."

"Again?" Vicente almost said.

"We're planning to buy this little apartment in Arlingdale, a small city far away from here," their father added.

_Arlingdale_. It sounded so peculiarly foreign, nothing like the cities or districts they'd heard of before. It was different from Freguesia da Sé or Wan Chai or Kaohsiung or all the places they were familiar with.

He didn't like it.

Yao's face was a careful mask of nonchalance. "Do we have to speak Mandarin there?"

"You will have to speak English," their mother replied.

Ling audibly groaned and crossed her arms. "But my English is bad."

Their father raised an eyebrow. "Then you'll have to get better."

Vicente thought of his English tests and their almost-flawless scores, always eighty-nines or A-'s, falling short of perfection. He remembered catching a glimpse of Leon's English assessments, almost always above ninety marks or stamped with bright, proud A's.

It was the only subject he was good at.

Leon was the only one out of the four of them who could speak English flawlessly without an accent, or not mingling his sentences with Cantonese or Mandarin. His Mandarin, on the other hand, was heavily accented, every other sentence turning into awkward Cantonese until he could stop talking. It was clear that he'd fit right in once they moved to the West.

After dinner, Leon went straight to his room, instantly grabbing a book from his desk and flicking it open. Vicente glanced at the yellowing pages of Leon's book, filled with little English words like black ants. He didn't understand half the words that Leon seemed to be practically eating up.

He sat down at his desk, cleared away the clutter and pulled out his handbook. He read through his teacher's reviews of his speaking assessments, his lilted Mandarin and his broken English, the only thing in school he was bad at.

Arlingdale would mean constant conversations in English, mocking looks every time he stuttered or forgot a word. It meant the start of a new life, for the third time in six years.


	5. Unknown and Unknowing

His hand twinged.

Every flex of his wrist, every brush of his still-healing burn over the cold metal of the mixing bowl sent a dull wave of pain through Vicente’s arm. Kneading the pineapple pastry dough and watching it flow through his fingers, he imagined his thoughts draining out through his hands, mixing into the dough and rising it into a delicious pastry.

Yao looked over at him and with a swift motion swiped the mixing bowl out of his hands. “That looks good enough, Vicente. Can you get the pineapple filling for me?”

Part of him wanted to protest, to grab the bowl back and shape the dough himself. He’d read the recipe a million times, in both English and Chinese, and it was practically engraved in his memory. But Vicente held his tongue, went to the small refrigerator in their kitchen and reached up on tiptoes to take out a heavy frosted tray of rich, sour-sweet pineapple filling. His hands shook as he carried it back to the kitchen counter.

“Thanks.” Yao had already turned away from him, busy rolling little handfuls of the crumbly shortbread dough into balls. “And scoop out some of the filling too, please.”

He obliged, listening to the boisterous chatter of Leon and his friends in the living room. Their shouts and jokes, occasional sentimental comments about Leon’s departure felt disorienting, like the idle buzzing of a fly hovering around him. _I wonder,_ Vicente thought to himself, _if any of my friends will come over before I leave Taipei._

A sharp tap to his shoulder snapped him back to attention. Eyes returning to stare at the glossy amber of the refrigerated pineapple jam, Vicente began passing Yao handfuls of the gloopy filling and tried to clang his spoon against the tray as loudly as possible.

Not long after, the first batch of pineapple pastries was baking away in their little oven, and the ruckus outside had grown louder. The tray of filling was halfway gone and the dough almost depleted, and Vicente sat down on a small, hard stool by the kitchen counter while listening to the ticking of the oven’s timer.

When a mere five minutes remained for the pastries to be finished, the scent of it, sweeter and more alluring than any type of perfume, began to waft around the kitchen. Butter, pineapple and winter melon combined to create a fragrance that was bound to escape the kitchen and send a troupe of hungry boys storming in. The very thought of eating the rich, delicious pineapple pastries made Vicente’s mouth water.

And sure enough, the door banged open just as Yao was pulling the hot tray out of the oven. Leon and his friends plodded into the kitchen, still talking among themselves, until Leon piped up, “Brother, are you making pineapple pastries?”

“That’s right!” An amiable smile already plastered in place, Yao slipped the steaming pastries onto a cooling rack. “Now, let’s wait for the pastries to cool down, and they’ll be ready to eat.”

Leon’s friends tittered excitedly, their eyes on the golden pastries and the tendrils of aromatic steam curling off of it, and it was clear that none of them had noticed Vicente. He gathered up some courage and quietly asked, “would any of you like some water?” But Leon excitedly talked over him by accident already:

“Hey, I think we made some lemon tea the other day, let’s get some!” Leon opened the refrigerator door and grabbed the heavy pitcher of lemon tea, deftly carrying it out of the kitchen. Clearly ignored, Vicente jumped on a stepstool to grab a few glasses from the cupboards.

He left Yao to tend to the rest of the pineapple pastries and went outside to the living room, where Leon and his friends were poring over a brightly-coloured poster of what Vicente guessed was one of their favourite books. He set the glasses down and ran back to the kitchen before any of them could say anything.

The next batches of pineapple pastries came out just as tasty-looking as the first, arranged daintily on a not-so-dainty metal plate and taken outside. Soon, the entire bowl of dough and the tray of filling were depleted. Yao looked at the clock and instantly his cheery demeanour vanished. He grabbed the mixing bowl, whisking it towards the sink before grabbing the tray. “Quick, let’s clean up before Mother and Father get home!”

The harsh washing detergent stung Vicente’s hands and the scalding water left them an angry, inflamed red. He envied Yao, who worked quickly enough that his hands never looked as burned as Vicente’s. The gauze that protected his burn scar soon dampened from the water, and he grimaced, reminding himself to replace it afterwards.

The doorbell rang.

Yao slammed the cupboard door shut and dried his hands on his trousers. He shooed Vicente out of the kitchen and raced for their apartment door. Vicente sat down clumsily at the dining table, and grabbed the nearest book he could reach, flicking it open to a random page.

Peering up from the pages of the book, Vicente watched as his father disappeared to his bedroom and his mother joyously greeted Leon and his friends. Yao was busy pouring glasses of iced lemon tea for them, even though the expression on Leon’s face was clearly one that pleaded, “please go away.”. Luckily, their mother didn’t seem to question the plate of pineapple pastries that had seemingly come out of nowhere.

Again trying to block out the cheery conversation in the living room, Vicente turned his eyes to the book in his hands.

Its cover read _English Grammar 101 - Junior High, Second Year_. The exercises on each page were completed in Yao’s neat handwriting, and a quick check to the answer key told Vicente that he’d gotten nearly every question correct. It was obvious that Yao had been preparing for their leave for Arlingdale that would take place two weeks later.

An explosion of laughter nearly made him drop the book. In the living room, Leon was doubled over with snorts as he retold some sort of funny story to his entranced audience, punctuating his performance with wild, windmilling hand gestures and satirical impressions of the people involved.

Vicente realised with a jolt that they were chatting in flawless English. Their exchanges were lightning-quick, terrifyingly fluent and almost alien to him. And all his prior wishes for Leon to talk to him were shadowed by a horrible realisation - he couldn’t want it anymore, not when he could barely speak in English.

Shame rippled through him. Being outdone by his younger brother, his popular, outgoing younger brother, felt humiliating. He felt like he was in school again, standing in front of the class holding a complicated-looking English passage, reading it out too quietly and trembling from head to toe.

_If I can’t even do well in English speaking in class, how will I talk in it every day?_

He turned to the next chapter of exercises in Yao’s book. It might as well have been in Arabic, German or any other language he hadn’t been painstakingly trying to learn.

Two weeks suddenly seemed to be awfully close.


	6. New, For The Fourth Time

The last time Vicente had been to Taoyuan Airport, he had been three years old.

He remembered passing by stores packed with souvenirs — magnets, tote bags and purses galore. What was clearest in his memory, as though the very scene was a video forever downloaded in his mind, was his mother tugging a figure of the 101 Tower out of his hand and firmly placing it back on the shelf. "We'll see the actual tower soon," she'd said.

And now, pushing carts piled upon with suitcases through the airport, Vicente wished so badly to run, once again, to the souvenir stores and buy a little piece of Taipei to slip into his pocket, to pull out whenever he felt nostalgic at Arlingdale and wanted to be reminded of his old (though also temporary) home. 

But he barely had any pocket money left for overpriced airport trinkets. Instead, Vicente resorted to staring longingly at tourists strolling past him and out of the airport, speaking to each other rapidly in their native languages. He heard a young couple jabbering to each other in English, discussing just where to go for lunch, and shuddered. Even after two too-fast weeks of fervently working on his English, poring over textbooks that he was meant to study in his next year of school in Taipei, he was far from fluent.

They dropped off their suitcases, and watched them disappear on conveyor belts, before heading to immigration. When the immigration officer who looked over his identification documents asked for his name, Vicente replied, as loudly and clearly as he could, "my name is Wang Jia-Lin."

He still had that blunt Cantonese accent that simply refused to go away, and Vicente was sure that he'd pronounced something incorrectly, but he didn't care — it was probably going to be the last time he'd be speaking in Mandarin.

As they left the booth, Vicente called out, "thank you, and have a good day!"

He did feel very silly, shouting out unnecessary things to strangers, but it felt good, too, to make the best of his last moments in Taipei. While his mother wasn't looking, Vicente ran over to a brochure stand and took a few booklets, stuffing them into his bag.

Later on, as they were boarding the airplane, Vicente saw Ling gazing around at the overhead carriers and seats, eyes wide with surprise. "Vic, Vic," she clamoured, tugging on his shirt-sleeve, "where are we sitting? Do we have seats, or do we have to stand up?"

Lifting up his ticket, Vicente pointed to his seat number. "See this number? That's where we're sitting. What does your ticket read?"

Ling glanced at her ticket, then the _42B_ boldly printed on it. Without another word, she ran off to her seat, plopping down and staring at her surroundings. "Look at all this stuff!" She unwrapped the blanket and threw it over her, then peered excitedly at the pocket of magazines in front of her. "Do we get to take them away?"

Vicente took his seat next to Ling, placing his bag under his chair and buckling his seatbelt. "I don't think we can," he replied, "how about we ask Yao?"

"Okay!" Ling clambered over Vicente, stepping on her seat (and his hand) in the process, and shouted across the aisle, "Yao, can we take all this away?"

A few people glared at her. Vicente, while nursing his bruised fingers, couldn't help laughing.

Yao looked up from his brand-new cell phone and answered, in a far quieter voice, "I'm afraid not." He shifted the pillow behind his back. "But since our flight is fourteen hours long, we can enjoy them for a while."

"_Fourteen hours_?" She looked out the window, stepping on her seat for the second time. "But how will we go to the bathroom? Or eat?"

"People will bring us food later on," Vicente explained, "and if you need to go to the bathroom, Mother will take you there." He glanced over at his parents, two aisles away and deep in conversation. "Or, uh, Leon can."

Leon waved from his spot next to Yao. He was nose-deep in an English book.

The speakers on the ceilings crackled. "Cabin crew, prepare for takeoff."

The "seatbelts on" light above them turned on.

"We have to buckle our seatbelts now," Yao said to Leon, who dog-eared his book and closed it. Vicente nudged his younger sister and she followed suit, fiddling with the seatbelt a few times before clicking it in place.

A few moments later, the airplane began to move. Ling squeaked in surprise and stared out the window again, where the airport was beginning to blur past their vision. When the airplane lifted off the ground, she squealed, again earning a few glares from the other passengers. "Vic, we're flying!"

He couldn't help feeling thrilled, too, as the airplane soared into the clouds and propelled into the sky. Night was falling, and the sunset looked even more stunning above the ground. The clouds were bathed in pink-and-yellow light, reminding Vicente of brightly-coloured cotton candy.

Soon, the "seatbelts on" light switched off, and flight attendants began to wheel trolleys down the aisle, offering passengers drinks. Vicente accepted two cups of water from a beaming attendant and handed one to Ling, who grabbed it so excitedly that she nearly spilled it.

At the aisle next to them, Leon took a cup of soda before Yao could stop him, sticking his tongue out at his oldest brother before taking a big gulp from it.

Vicente decided to poke at the little screen in front of him and busied himself with a game of online chess. Five rounds passed, one of which was interrupted by Ling jumping over him to visit Yao and Leon, before he heard the sound of trolleys being pushed down the aisle again.

He helped Ling unfold the little table that would hold her dinner, then pulled out his own just as trays of food were placed in front of them. The meal was familiar — a small scoop of steamed rice along with what appeared to be stewed vegetables and a chunk of pork. Vicente tapped Ling's shoulder when she reached for the cup that held their dessert first. "Let's have that later."

In the middle of their meal, while he was half-heartedly pushing the mushy vegetables around the plate, Vicente heard Ling complain, "this is gross."

Yao cleared his throat pointedly, so loud that he was heard from three seats away. Forcing down another spoonful of tepid rice, Vicente silently agreed with Ling.

Vicente was finishing up his mediocre dinner when his younger brother leaned across the aisle and poked him in the arm. "Vic, can I have your dessert?" He asked in English.

Taken aback by the question and wondering whether or not to sacrifice what seemed to be the only redeemable part of his meal to Leon, Vicente answered, "you can have half."

Leon seemed satisfied with his answer, and reached for the little cup and took half of Vicente's mango pudding. Vicente tucked into what was left of his overly-sweet pudding, relieved that it tasted at least a little better than his dinner.

Ling yawned next to him, abandoning her half-finished dinner and leaning back into her seat. "I'm sleepy."

He picked up her tray of food and placed it over his, waiting for a flight attendant to pass. "I'll turn off the lights for you."

Hugging her pillow to her chest, Ling burrowed under her blanket. Vicente handed their trays to a flight attendant and closed up his little table, then unfolded his blanket and decided that it'd be better if he were to sleep, too. He closed his eyes and let the gentle rocking of the plane lull him to sleep.

When he woke up, Vicente checked the television screen and found out that there was barely an hour left before they were to land - he'd slept for nearly twelve hours. Next to him, Ling was still deep in slumber, half-falling off her chair and her blanket on the floor. Across the aisle, he could see Leon, reading his book again, and Yao, who was watching a movie.

It wasn't long before he heard the overhead speakers crackle again. "Cabin crew, prepare for landing."

He stared out the window, watching the airplane dip lower, lower, lower, watched the ground became closer and closer, until he could make out every little building and road. Then the airplane hit the runway with a dull thud, and that was it. They were officially away from Taipei, halfway across the world and at a new home.

"Cabin crew, we have arrived."

…

Everything about the airport was different.

The signs were all in English, for one, and Vicente couldn't understand half of them. It seemed that not even his two-week-long crash-course in English had prepared him for their move, and that was evident when they went through immigration. His answers were all quiet and stuttered, and the immigration officer smiling reassuringly at him as he passed by only succeeded in making him feel worse.

They were to take a bus from the airport to Arlingdale. Vicente dropped unfamiliar-looking coins into the driver's hands and stared out the window as they left the airport. The street signs were all leading to places like Willow Avenue or Dayston, places that sounded as foreign and strange as Arlingdale.

When the family arrived at Arlingdale, and they all went up to their new apartment, Vicente found himself staring around at the spotless white walls, the unadorned wooden floor, the bizarreness of it all. There he was, an eight-year-old boy in his fourth home since birth, in who-knows-where, about to start a new life again.


	7. Mysteries

Like most things since he moved, the cafeteria of Vicente's new school was completely different.

In Taipei, his primary school didn't even _have_ a cafeteria. Instead, he and his classmates moved around the classroom, switching seats until they found their friends, and pulled out their lunch-boxes at their desks. Vicente often found himself sitting alone at his seat, poking at lukewarm leftovers from the night before. On the rare occasion that his friends joined him, they always left after they were done eating for extracurriculars.

In Arlingdale, where everything was brand new and completely foreign to him, the one thing that simply _had_ to stay the same was how he was left behind. Just barely avoiding being trampled by his classmates, all of whom were racing into the cafeteria and hogging tables for their friends, Vicente stood in the entrance and wondered who would let him sit down.

He hadn't talked to anyone in his class, except to introduce himself, and he was sure that nobody remembered his name — not that he remembered any of his classmates' names, either. Taking a tentative step into the cafeteria, his lunch-box knocked against his knees.

His eyes fell on Leon, who was sitting right in the middle of the cafeteria. He was surrounded by kids, all of them chattering excitedly. It seemed that his little brother was just as popular no matter where he went.

He was considering just hiding in his classroom and having his lunch there when he finally saw someone he recognised. Ling was sitting alone at a little table, eating her lunch with one hand and doodling in her new notebook with the other.

It took Vicente no time at all to sit down next to Ling. He pulled out his lunch, and asked, feeling like a hypocrite, "how were your classes?"

Unsurprisingly, Ling replied in Mandarin. "I didn't know some of the things my teacher was saying." She stabbed her dumpling with her flimsy plastic chopsticks. "And everyone was speaking English."

Having spent the past years of her life in Taiwan, it was clear that Ling was having a much harder time adapting. Vicente opened his lunchbox, finding the same meal as Ling's — the frozen dumplings that Yao had found at the supermarket the night before after realising they'd have nothing for lunch otherwise. "Did you make any new friends?" He asked.

She shook her head again. "Nobody talked to me."

He didn't have anything to say as reassurance. Vicente stared down at his dumplings, limp and dull-looking in the harsh light of the cafeteria. He'd made dumplings — well, potstickers — with Yao once, pressing fresh, soft wrappers over little dollops of cabbage and pork, sealing them with clouded slurry, and frying them until the filling was juicy and hot, and the wrapper somehow crispy and soft at the same time. But that was in Hong Kong, and it all felt like it'd happened a million years ago. Vicente took a bite of a stone-cold dumpling. The dough was tough, and he couldn't even tell what it was stuffed with. He grimaced.

Like their mediocre meal on the flight from Taipei, Ling seemed to have the same reaction as him. She glared at her lunchbox, and the sad little dumplings inside. "Ew."

And again, he felt the same, but Vicente nudged her anyway. "Don't say that, it's not _too_ bad."

"I don't want it."

The last time they'd had dumplings was at a diner in Taipei, a few months before they moved. The dish of dumplings, arranged elaborately and smelling the a mixture of cabbage, pak choi and rice flour they were made of, had spewed steam the entire meal, fogging Vicente's glasses over. Together, he, Yao, Leon and Ling had finished five whole plate of them. Now, Vicente made himself finish one of the overly-chewy dumplings, and said, "we won't have anything to eat until dinner."

Still glaring, Ling picked up one of the dumplings with her chopsticks and bit at it, then scrunched up her face in poorly-veiled disgust. "_Ewwww._"

They finished the rest of their lunch in silence. When the bell rang, Ling was off first, clutching her notebook to her chest and lunchbox knocking against her knees. Vicente packed up and left, much slower, and saw Leon again. He was alone, nose in some brightly-coloured comic book.

"Ka Long!"

He turned at the mention of his Chinese name (in Cantonese, no less), but his eyes were still trained on his comic book. "Hi."

Like he did with his younger sister, Vicente asked, "how was class?"

"Good."

"Did you make any friends?" He already knew the answer to that question.

"Yeah." It was clear Leon didn't want to talk.

Still, he tried to keep the conversation alive. "Have you got any homework yet?"

"No." Leon began to turn away, idly flipping a page in his book. Vicente stood there as Leon walked away, to a group of children who must've been his new friends. Then his watch told him he had a minute to get back to his classroom, and he left, too.

…

Outside their apartment, Vicente found Yao fiddling with his pencil case, pulling out a jangling key and pushing it into the keyhole. "Father and Mother aren't home yet," he explained as the door clicked open.

Once they were inside, Leon went straight to his room, arms full with books that he must've borrowed from the school library. Ling and Yao both sat down at the dining table; Ling pulled out her sketchbook again, Yao pulled out his planner. After standing at the doorway for quite a while, Vicente decided to follow Leon into his room.

There, he pulled out a few textbooks from his school bag. Some of them felt a little familiar, like the mathematics textbook that still taught him division and fractions, and the science textbook that held information on plotting graphs, observing plants and drawing diagrams.

But there were some textbooks that were completely different. He no longer had a Chinese textbook, for one, and the French textbook that took its place was filled with vocabulary he didn't understand. His social studies book no longer talked about the railways of Taipei, or the local festivals, but talked about Western history, mythology and thousands more things he'd never heard about. Vicente pushed them back into his school bag, and dug around his drawer for a book.

The book that he managed to retrieve was The Journey to The West, an outlandish tale about monkey kings and talking pigs. He'd read it a few times before, but never enough to remember every minute detail of it. So when he opened up the book, Vicente let himself be lost in the words that seemed to fly out of the pages and shape the world around him.

_There was a rock that since the creation of the world was worked up by the pure essences of Heaven and the fine savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a playing ball,_ the book read.

Paragraph after paragraph flew by, page after page and chapters upon chapters. It was all so recognisable, it felt like a safe haven in a strange world, and before he knew it, Vicente had finished the book. When he looked up, Leon was gone, and one look at the clock told him he had missed dinner.

_But no matter,_ he thought. He closed his books and fell asleep, right then and there, dreaming of monasteries and the Silk Road.

...

A/N: The English-translated excerpt of "The Journey to The West" was translated by Arthur Waley.


	8. Mid-Autumn

"_For the first few days of his life, Wilbur was allowed to live in a box near the stove in the kitchen. Then, when Mrs. Arable complained…_"

Vicente watched his classmate read another paragraph of the story, standing confidently at her seat and her book held nice and high. At the front of the classroom, his English teacher nodded approvingly at her performance. Then, a few lines later, his teacher gestured for the student behind her to start reading. Vicente stared down at his copy of _Charlotte's Web_ and counted down until he found the paragraph he'd have to read. The vocabulary was easy enough, but still he repeated the sentences over and over in his head, muttering quietly to himself.

The boy in front of him sat down. Vicente stood up, bracing his hands on his desk and stared down at his book. He cleared his throat and began. "_Fern peered through — _"

"Speak up," someone at the back of the class shouted. The teacher frowned at them, whoever they were.

Taking a deep breath, Vicente started over. "_Fern peered through the door. Wilbur was poking the straw with his - his snout._" Luckily, nobody corrected him — he'd worried that he was pronouncing "snout" wrong. "_In a short time he had dug a tunnel in the straw._"

It was becoming easier to read the paragraph, easier than he'd thought it would be. He looked to the next page and continued, "_he crawled into the tunnel and disappeared from sight, c-completely covered with straw._" Vicente squinted at the next sentence. It had a big word in it, one he wasn't sure how to pronounce. "_Fern was… was encanted?_"

"En_chan_ted," his teacher corrected.

"_E-Enchanted._" Vicente's face burned. "_It re-relived — _"

"Relieved," the teacher corrected again. They smiled consolingly, though it didn't help much. "Take your time, Vicente."

"_It relieved her mind to know… know that her baby would sleep covered up, and would stay warm._" His heart was racing, and he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. Then Vicente sat down, staring at his feet listlessly. It felt like the entire class was staring at him, judging his every move and word.__

_ _Behind him, his classmate stood up and started reading. Vicente's heart pounded in his ears, he felt freezing despite the lukewarm autumn sunlight shining in through the classroom windows. Even after the bell rang and signified the end of class, adrenaline still rushed through him._ _

_ _The teacher left, and the classroom instantly flooded with noise. For a moment, the sight of everyone packing their bags confused him until Vicente's watch _beeped_, lighting up slightly with the numbers _3:00 p.m.._ He reached for his bag and dropped in his pencil-case and his folder, filled with the few worksheets he had to complete. His new school had far less homework, one of the nicer changes about it._ _

_ _Outside their schoolhouse, Yao was waiting for them. Vicente was about to ask why he was out of school early when he remembered — it was Friday, the only day of the week his brother wasn't attending meetings with the mathletes, the science team or whatever other team he'd joined. He smiled at Vicente, asking, "how was your day?"_ _

_ _Before his humiliating performance in English class, there had been French class, when he'd barely said a word, and science class, where he'd struggled to memorise the complicated new English terms. He could relay all that to Yao, but Vicente settled on replying, "it was fine."_ _

_ _"That's good to hear." Yao smiled, switching to sling his bag over his other shoulder. "Ah, I got lots of homework today. My teachers say that next year, when I go on to high school, things will be even more stressful." His Northern accent, still intact nine years after leaving Beijing, felt almost soothing. "But the workload still isn't as big as it was back in Taipei."_ _

_ _He continued talking about high school, and the electives he might not be able to apply for, and exams, until Vicente began tuning out. It was then that Ling and Leon trooped out onto the schoolyard. Vicente opened his mouth to greet them, then realised with horror that Ling was walking with a slight limp and was clinging to Leon's arm for support. Her knees were scraped, the red wounds visible even behind patches of pink Band-Aids._ _

_ _Yao was at her side in seconds, kneeling down to look at the injury. "_Aiyah_! Yue Ling, what happened? Did you fall over?"_ _

_ _Ling pouted, kicking out when Yao tried to touch her knees. "Someone pushed me."_ _

_ _The thought that someone could hurt his sweet little sister sent anger pulsing inside Vicente. "Who pushed you?" He demanded._ _

_ _"Don't remember." Ling tried to keep walking. "But it doesn't hurt. When I fell, I didn't cry."_ _

_ _"Not even a little?"_ _

_ _"No!" Ling stared up at him as though the very notion of tearing up was absolutely ridiculous. "I really didn't." She nudged Leon. "Tell Jia Lin I didn't cry."_ _

_ _Leon started at being mentioned. "Ling didn't cry," he repeated robotically._ _

_ _It wasn't like he'd know whether it was true or not. Vicente took Ling's bag from her and carried it next to his own, trying not to let the extra weight slow him down. "That was very brave of you."_ _

_ _She puffed out her chest in pride, beaming as she walked just a little faster and made Leon stumble in an attempt to catch up._ _

_ _In front of their apartment, Yao fumbled for his keys again and held the door for them. Once he entered, Vicente went to his room and pulled out his homework folder and pencil case. He made quick work of his worksheets, then pushed them aside and looked at his planner — the same one he'd had since third grade._ _

_ _He had no quizzes or tests the next week, but it wasn't like he'd be spending the weekend celebrating because of it. Even after two weeks of school, Vicente still didn't know all his classmates' names, let alone befriend them. But he shook those thoughts out of his head and looked at his planner again._ _

_ _According to the Chinese characters below the dates, it was the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. A long-ago lesson during social studies class in Taipei suddenly flashed through his mind, reminding him that that date indicated the Mid-Autumn Festival._ _

_ _His first celebration of the Festival had been in Macau, when Yao had walked him down to the car park of their apartment complex and lit him a candle to place in his red paper lantern. They'd walked all around the car park, staring out the street at the lights of the city, and only stopped when the candle inside the lantern had burned out._ _

_ _In Hong Kong, their parents had saved up to buy a tin of mooncakes. Vicente had split a mooncake with Yao, and even though he'd only had half of the greasy, rich pastry, it'd been enough to make him full for the entire night. The day after the Mid-Autumn Festival, when school was off, he and Yao had stayed home and ate the leftover mooncakes, stuffing themselves with lotus paste-filled delights until they were close to bursting._ _

_ _And after Ling was born, when he was in his second year of primary school and she was four, their parents had taken the four of them to the park with their starfruit-shaped lanterns. They'd chased each other around the lawn, lanterns swinging from their sticks, while their parents barbecued chicken wings and fishballs, waving smoke away every time it billowed up. It had all been fun and games until Leon's lantern somehow caught fire._ _

_ _Then it'd been a matter of figuring out just how to extinguish the flames before they spread to the grass and, in his young, overactive imagination, burn the whole park down. He'd grabbed a bottle of soda and poured it all over the burning lantern (most of it had ended up on Leon's hands). The rest of the night had been spent cleaning the soda out of their shoes and hair._ _

_ _But in Arlingdale, where probably nobody knew about the Festival, Vicente could only keep his dreams of one day running around with a lantern and eating mooncakes to himself. That was all in the past, after all._ _

_ _He was snapped out of his memories when Leon, who'd somehow appeared next to him, suddenly tapped him on the shoulder. Vicente jumped a little, and he was harshly brought back to reality. Outside his bedroom, he could hear shouting — his parents must've been having another argument._ _

_ _"Brother," he asked, "what is '_lei fuun_'?"_ _

_ _"What?" Vicente hadn't heard that term in years. "Where did you hear it from?"_ _

_ _"I heard Father use the term just now. Vic, what does it mean?"_ _

_ _He flipped to the last page of his planner and wrote the Chinese characters on it: 離婚. "The English word for it is, 'divorce'." The word "divorce" had been in one of his vocabulary lists in English class. "It means that two people will not be married any more."_ _

_ _Leon's brow furrowed. "So if Mother and Father divorce, will they not be our parents?"_ _

_ _He almost tore the page out of his planner in surprise. "They won't divorce."_ _

_ _"But Father said he wanted to."_ _

_ _This time he _did_ tear the page off. "He actually said that?"_ _

_ _"He did."_ _

_ _He could hardly believe his ears. His parents had argued since he'd been tiny, and they couldn't ever go a week without one conflict, and a divorce was probably the only way the marriage was going to result in, but the mere _thought_ that it could all end was… strange, to say the least._ _

_ _"Brother?" Leon piped up again. "Are Mother and Father divorcing because of us?"_ _

_ _"I don't know, Ka Long." Vicente took one more look at the two Chinese characters on his tore planner page, and crumpled the piece of paper up. "I really don't."_ _


	9. The First Snow

A scream woke him up.

Head still clouded with sleep, Vicente's eyes snapped open and he promptly fell out of bed. Across the room, Leon sat up, rubbing his eyes groggily. "Wha?"

Back of his head throbbing from the fall, Vicente stood up, approaching his desk to look for his glasses, and then it hit him.

"Ling!"

Vicente shoved his glasses on and ran to her room, not caring that the loud thumping of his feet might wake up his parents. He threw the door open, fear rushing through him, and —

"Look!"

His little sister was standing on her bed, bouncing excitedly as she tried to look out the window. "Look outside!"

He joined Ling by the window and gasped.

Down on the ground, where everything seemed small from their apartment, the ground was carpeted in white. The roads, the sidewalks, the rooftops... everything was pure white. Even the top of some trees were white, like they were covered in powdered sugar.

And white was falling from the sky, little soft tufts like cotton descending down to earth. Ling squealed in excitement as one of the tufts landed on their outer windowsill. "Jia Lin, is this — is this — " she kicked the wall as she thought of the phrase. It came out in Mandarin. "_Xià xuě_?"

Snowing! They'd never had to use that term before, for Taiwan's winters never saw snow except on the highest hills. But that was the word for the white wonderland outside. "Yes, it's snowing."

"It's pretty!" She began to bounce on her bed, and the thin mattress creaked its protest. "Everything is so white!"

He pressed his nose against the ice-cold window, gazing at the snow that blanketed the ground. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a pillow hit him in the back, and he fell back to the mattress in shock.

"Quiet down." Yao's cranky, sleep-dulled voice came from the other bed in the room. Vicente looked behind him and saw a Yao-shaped lump underneath the quilt. "'m tired. Need t'sleep."

He realised that the sun was barely up, and it was most likely still early in the morning — on the weekend, too. A ratty stuffed panda whacked him in the chest next, and Vicente swiftly threw it back onto Yao's bed.

"I'll go back to sleep too, then." Vicente hopped off Ling's bed, feet landing on the freezing floor, and slowly padded back to his own bedroom. On the way back, he ruffled Ling's hair. "Don't disturb Yao, okay?"

"Mm." Ling went back to staring out the window.

Vicente sat down on his own bed, and Leon stared at him curiously. "Are you going back to sleep?"

He nodded.

Leon snorted, grabbing a comic book from his desk and spinning around on the chair while leafing through it. "Hah? You're still tired?"

"My teachers are giving me lots of homework, and I have to study for the exams next month," Vicente said, yawning. "And I nearly cracked my head open after falling off the bed. I need to recover from all that."

"You did _not_ crack your head open."

"But I nearly did, and it still hurts." Vicente pulled the blankets over himself. Leon muttered something about over-dramatic older brothers, and that was all he heard before he drifted back to sleep.

...

The incessant, unfortunately-familiar feeling of poking at his sides woke Vicente up a second time. He cracked an eye open to see Ling, beaming with excitement. "Wake up! Wake up!" She hollered, pulling the blanket off of him. "Big Brother made breakfast and I want to go outside!"

Sunlight was peering in through the windows, and he could feel the side of his glasses pushing into his face. He sat up, squinting at the clock on the wall until the stars faded from his eyes and he could look at the hands.

"Oh," Vicente mumbled, as Ling grabbed his hand and tried to pull him out of bed, "it's... uh..." he glanced at the clock again. "Nine over-ten?"

"What does that _mean_?"

"It's nine fifty. I think." He approached his closet, shivering, and pulled clothes out at random. Already feeling his face freezing off, Vicente left his bedroom and ran into the bathroom to change.

...

"There's only one piece left." Leon slid a plate of buttered toast across the table. "Sorry, we ate everything else."

"_Ay_," Vicente mock-lamented, taking the piece of toast, "I guess I'll starve."

"Too bad, you should've woken up earlier. Poor Ling had to wake you up herself."

"Lazybones," Ling teased.

"Who would've thought you could sleep more than me?" Yao sat down at the dining table with a mug of hot milk. He put in a spoonful of sugar and stirred, the spoon clinking against the mug. "I thought for sure you'd be up first."

He bit into the cold piece of toast and accepted the glass that Yao passed him. He nearly dropped it when Ling shook his arm. "Hurry up, I want to play in the snow!"

"So do I," Leon said.

"You'll need to wear a sweater, a jacket and a scarf." Yao stirred his milk again. He shivered, rubbing his arms. "We're indoors, and I'm already cold!"

After another jab from Ling, Vicente polished off his toast and ran back to his room to grab his coat and scarf. His heart was pounding in excitement, and he childishly bounded back out, nearly slipping on his socked feet, and pulled his coat on. He felt just as excited, if not more, than Ling and Leon, and in minutes he was done. It was a little hard to bend down to put his shoes on with all the layers around him, but he managed to do it without falling on his face.

Poor Leon wasn't as lucky, and he shouted, surprised, as he slipped and nearly got a mouthful of shoes. Yao snorted and pulled him up.

Soon they were done, and Yao lead them out of the apartment and onto the sidewalk beside it. Ling stared out at the snowy ground longingly, but didn't go out to play with it. Instead, she tugged at Yao's sleeve, asking, "will Mother and Father be angry at us for playing by ourselves?"

"They are fast asleep," Yao reassured, "and we'll be back upstairs by lunchtime."

Or maybe, Vicente silently added, they'll be too busy arguing to realise we've been out. But all thoughts of their parents were expelled when he felt something cold and wet smack his face. He jumped, landing on snow with a loud crunch.

Already far away and gathering another handful of snow, Leon grinned and tossed another snowball at him. He jumped out of the way, looking back at the footprints in the pristine white snow as he ran. Leon gave chase, and Vicente kicked up footfuls of snow in an attempt to stop him.

Ling was piling up snow, making a tiny canvas on the ground and doodling pictures on it with her bare hands. Vicente bent down to look at her drawings, when a handful of snow was thrown on his head.

He shouted, the frigid pile of snow melting and sending rivulets of water running down his hair, and ran after Leon again. But his little brother ducked behind Yao a split second before he could retaliate via snowball in face, and Vicente could barely stop himself before he crashed into him.

Yao paid him no attention, scooping up a bit of snow and letting it melt in his hands. "Ah," he sighed, "it's good to see snow again."

"You're talking like it's an old friend of yours."

"Because it is!" Yao wiped his hands on his coat. "The last time I saw snow was when I lived in Beijing. It was really pretty, but everything was so cold, even colder than it is here." He stepped down, hard, into a pile of snow and heard it crunch. "But I had nobody to play with in Beijing." Yao kicked snow onto his shoes, and said, "this is far better!"

They fooled around all morning, until the snow turned a pale grey with the dirt on their shoes, and their hair and clothes were wet with melted snow and sweat. Laughing and hungry, they trouped back upstairs and threw off their jackets, and, as Vicente kicked his shoes off, he realised that their parents had yet to show themselves.

Back in his and Leon's room, as he bundled his coat and scarf back into their joint closet, and he flopped onto his creaky mattress with a book, he heard voices from their parents' bedroom.

"Oh, goody," Leon muttered. "They're up."

Then the voices turned into shouts, and Leon bolted, dropping his comic book and shooting across the room to sit on Vicente's bed. He'd always been the one most affected when their parents fought. Vicente patted his shoulder, trying to block out the shouting. "Everything's going to be fine," he whispered, like he'd done since they were kids, "we'll be fine."

"_Will_ we?"

And once again, all he could answer was a bleak, "I don't know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: "Nine over-ten" is a rough translation of how time is told in Cantonese — minutes are counted in intervals of five, so five minutes past nine would be nine over-one, ten minutes past nine would be nine over-two, and so on.


	10. New Year's Eve

“I can’t believe it!” Leon exclaimed furiously for possibly the millionth time. “Greg said he never invited me, even though he asked me to come to his house for a playdate a week ago!”

Though he had absolutely no clue who this Greg boy was, or when he’d invited Leon to a playdate on New Year’s Eve, Vicente nodded patiently as he did his holiday review. Leon and his friend had had a long, enraged phone call a while ago, which ended in his usually level-headed brother slamming the phone back on the receiver so hard that everyone in the apartment had heard it (even their parents, who had been engrossed in their own loud discussion — well, their argument — had popped their heads out of their room to check on Leon).

He paused for air, and Vicente took the chance to ask, “did your classmate say why you couldn’t go to the playdate?”

“No!” And Leon was back to ranting. “Greg invited every boy in the class to go to his house, and it was going to be _awesome_. Did you know, he has a WHOLE bookshelf of comic books, and an X-Box, _and_ a Nintendo DS. And now everyone’s going to get to play with that stuff, and I won’t.”

It was certainly strange; why Leon, who’d always been popular despite, contrary to what happened in most books about school, being a good student and what most kids would call a “nerd”, would get excluded from what seemed to be one of the biggest events in his second-grade school year. Vicente grabbed the ratty old comic book that Leon had clutched in his fist before it could crumple up even more. “Well, look on the bright side. Since you can’t go to the playdate, at least you can spend time with us.”

“That’s not a bright side!”

“I’ll remember that the next time you need help with your homework.” Vicente held the comic book high above his head as Leon jumped for it. “And if you want your comic back, you can’t try to destroy it.”

“Why do _you_ care, you don’t read them!”

“Because,” Vicente continued, standing on his bed and rising on tiptoes, “you only have five of these, and if you go on treating all your books like this, they’ll turn into waste paper for Yao to wrap cabbage in. Can you imagine your comic books being used to wrap cabbage?” He added at the end, “and since we don’t have pocket money, you won’t be able to buy them back.”

He jumped again for the comic book. “Gimme the book!”

Vicente jumped, too, keeping the comic away from Leon’s hands by a hair. “Only if you’ll be nice to it.” The whole thing was petty, and, having turned ten just a few days ago, Vicente ought not to act like so, but he couldn’t resist being silly. 

“Just gimme the book, you dumb, stupid, heck-ing — “

The door swung open, and Yao stepped inside looking frazzled. “Jia Lin, Jia Long, can you help — “

He stared at the brothers, who froze. Vicente let go of the comic. It landed on Leon’s head with a soft _thwack_. 

“Jia Lin, Jia Long,” Yao repeated, pretending he didn’t see Leon flip Vicente an obscene hand gesture, “I’m making almond cookies. Can you help me?”

“Of course.”

“No way.”

Leon stared at Vicente as though he’d grown five heads. He stared back. “What, is this the first day you’ve known me?”

He jumped off the bed, careful not to accidentally step on Leon’s comic, and followed Yao to the kitchen. An enormous bowl of almonds was sitting on the kitchen counter, as were a stick of butter and a bag of flour. Yao bent down to pull a strange contraption out of the drawer. It looked a little like a juicer, but with blades in place of the juicing tip.

“We don’t have an actual food processor, so this will have to do.” Yao opened up the top of the contraption and dropped a handful of almonds inside. “Pull the string on top, until the almonds inside are all ground up,” he instructed.

He took the processor and tugged on the string, watching as the blades inside the container spun around and began to break up the almonds. Vicente pulled it again and again, listening to the bits of almonds clatter around. But soon his arm tired, and he switched to use his left instead. Next to him, Yao was chopping his own almonds into thin slices.

Yao unhooked the wok from its spot on the wall, and Vicente looked at him confusedly. Then he heated the wok up, poured the sliced almonds in, and Vicente understood.

In less than a minute, the kitchen was filled with the delightful scent of roasting almonds. It was even better than any of the other pastries he and Yao had made before. It lingered long after Yao turned the heat off the stove and mixed the almond slices with the flour, sugar and ground almonds, even as the two of them melted butter, measured water and slowly formed the dough. 

“Father bought me a box of almond cookies once, when we lived in Macau.” Yao pulled out half the dough from the bowl and began dividing them into smaller globs. “The bakery had put them in moulds, so they all had such pretty patterns on them. But we don’t have them, so this is all we can do.”

Vicente stared at the cookies, which were perfectly smooth and round but did look rather boring. Then he noticed the small canister of toothpicks at the corner of the countertop, shoved away to make room for their baking tray. “Brother, I have an idea.”

“Hmm?”

Shocked that Yao would even consider what he thought of, he said tentatively, “what if we drew on the cookies with the toothpicks? Would that work?”

He was already reaching for the toothpicks.

“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Yao shook out two toothpicks and handed one to Vicente. 

They drew patterns on the cookies; flowers on Vicente’s and animals on Yao’s. After every one of them were adorned in their artwork, they laid the cookies on a baking tray and placed in into the oven. But the moment Yao shut the oven door, he let out a small “ah!”.

“What is it?” Vicente asked.

“I just thought that Ling would’ve loved to do that.” Yao clapped his hand to his forehead. “Silly me, not asking her to come out and help.”

“What are you making?”

Speak of the devil! 

Ling emerged in the kitchen doorway, sniffing the air. “Something smells nice.”

“We’re making almond cookies.” Yao hooked his thumb toward the oven. “They’ll be done in fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes is so _long_.”

“It’s not. You know, Mother once taught me how to make a stew that took six whole hours to cook.”

Her eyes widened, and she didn’t say anything more about how long it took for the cookies to bake.

The oven _ding_ed a while later, and Yao slipped on oven mitts to pull the tray out. Then it took five more minutes of trying to extract each brittle, piping-hot cookie onto the cooling rack with chopsticks before Vicente gave up and decided to tip the entire tray, baking sheet and all, onto the cooling rack. 

Half of their batch broke and ended up more crumbs than cookie, but the surviving cookies, with their hand-drawn patterns, didn’t look too bad. Ling tried to take one cookie, with a turtle drawn on top, before Yao swatted her hand away. “Not now.”

“But they look really good!”

“We can have them later, while we’re counting down to the new year.” Yao nudged Vicente’s hand away next. “Until then, nobody can touch the cookies.”

He pointed to Yao, pushing broken pieces of each cookie together to form a rough circle. “But you’re touching them now.”

“Now I’m not.” Yao brushed his hand on his shirt and backed away from the tray. “Let’s all keep away from the cookies until tonight, at eleven o’clock.”  
…  
Predictably, by the time eleven at night came around and the family gathered in the living room to watch the new year’s countdown, half the cookies were already gone. Ling, Leon and Vicente guiltily brushed cookie crumbs off their clothes while Yao glared with fake anger, before dissolving into laughter.

Everyone was in a good mood, even their parents, who’d actually bothered to make dinner, leaving Yao to teach the siblings how to play chess while they had worked in the kitchen. The TV blared a pop song that Leon hummed along to, the earlier fiasco about his playdate forgotten, and Vicente leaned across the coffee table to keep Ling’s colour pencils from rolling off. 

“It’s the last minute of 2014, folks!” The commentator on TV announced. “Get ready for the countdown!”

Leon passed their mother a cookie. Yao checked the time on his cell phone, and Vicente looked at the clock. He ducked to make way for Leon, who poked Ling on the shoulder. “What’s your new year’s resolution?”

“My what?”

“It means what you want to do better in the new year,” Yao supplied.

“Oh.” Ling tapped her pencil against the coffee table in thought. “I think… I want to draw more pictures. And make more friends! Making friends would be nice.” She leaned closer to Leon, lowering her voice and whispering, “and I want Mother and Father to stop shouting at each other.”

He smiled sadly. “That’s not really a resolution, but I want that too.” Then Leon caught sight of the TV screen, and said, louder, “ten!”

The countdown was starting. Vicente continued the count, “nine.”

“Eight!”

Yao jumped when he was elbowed, and missed his count. “Six,” he made up for it.

“Five!”

“Four!”

To their surprise, their parents, who’d just started talking again, joined in to count. “Three!”

“Two!”

“One!”

Ling fell off the couch, Yao’s cell phone somehow landed on their father’s stomach and Vicente dodged Leon’s waving arms as they all yelled, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

That night, after finishing off the entire tray of almond cookies and chasing each other around the living room, their parents practically had to drag them back to bed. And as his bedroom door swung shut and he saw Leon duck under the covers with a book and a flashlight, Vicente hoped that the new year would mean things would get better.


	11. Chaotic Dinner

Cooking a meal looks, sounds and feels easy at first, but when dinner is twenty minutes away, the only thing cooked properly is the plain rice and a pair of overactive kids with no cooking experiences are the only source of assistance, things get more than a little sticky.

All this was running through Vicente's mind as he moved the rice cooker, prompting it to puff out steam that fogged over his glasses. He spotted Leon opening the freezer door and ran toward him, hopping over a fallen spoon. "What are you looking for?"

"We can't just serve rice." Leon pulled a frosted package from the freezer, brushing ice off of it. "Look, we can make some dumplings."

He kicked himself for not thinking of that. Vicente took the package from his brother with one hand, unhooked a frying pan from the wall with the other, and, intending to place the frying pan on the stove, instead slammed the bag of dumplings onto the stove.

Something inside cracked.

Leon pried the slowly-thawing bag out of Vicente's hand. "You're really dumb."

Vicente ignored him and set the frying pan down, calling over his back, "take out, uh…" He did the math in his head. "Maybe fifty dumplings?"

"That many?"

"There are a lot of us in this family."

He snorted and began shaking out the dumplings onto a dish. Vicente turned back to the stove, pouring oil onto the stone-cold pan. It took him three tries to turn the stove on properly without the gas sputtering, but he began to heat up the oil. Frozen dumplings continued to clatter against the plastic dish.

"Don't tilt the bag so much."

"Go away, Yuet Ling."

"The dumplings are making a really big pile."

"Well, duh."

"They're going to fall over." Ling gasped. "They're falling over, stop pouring, nononoNONO — "

The sound of frozen dumpling lumps falling from the dish onto the floor filled the kitchen. Vicente looked down when he felt something cold bump his slippered foot; it was a dumpling that had somehow skidded across the floor from the counter on the opposite side of the room.

Ling kicked Leon in the shin. "_You're_ dumb."

"Uh…" Vicente looked at the dumpling-covered floor. "Pick up the dumplings that fell on the floor, and throw them away."

Then something started to smoke.

"The pan!" Leon left his sister to deal with the fallen dumplings and lunged at the smoking frying pan. He stuck it in the sink and flipped the tap on, waving away the cloud of smoke that rose up. The pan sizzled for a full minute under the cold water, and when all the smoke cleared Vicente could see, with a sigh of relief, that the pan wasn't damaged. "Thanks," he said. "I didn't notice the smoke."

"You're really, really stupid."

"Now, is that how you should speak to your brother?"

"You're supposed to put the oil on the pan after it becomes hot, not the other way around."

"Oh." Vicente felt like kicking himself again. "Right. Don't know how I forgot."

Ling passed them the plate of remaining dumplings, Vicente heated up the pan again and placed the dumplings onto the pan, arranged neatly in a circle like he'd seen Yao do before. "Can someone pass me the cover?"

Leon stomped off in hunt of it. "Why are you bossing us around?"

"Because I'm the oldest."

"No, Yao's the oldest."

"But he doesn't count because he's sick." Vicente turned around. "Have you found the frying pan cover yet?"

"Here."

Vicente took the cover and placed it over the frying pan. Steam fogged it up almost immediately, and the sizzling of cooking dumplings slowly faded to a dull bubbling. "How long does the package say we have to cook them for?"

Grabbing the half-empty bag, Ling squinted at the instructions. "Er… three minutes?"

He looked at the clock. They had around ten minutes before their father was supposed to get home. Vicente left the dumplings to cook and grabbed placemats, chopsticks and chopstick holders from their cutlery drawer, pushing them to Ling. "Set the table!"

The rice cooker's cover swung open and Vicente began scooping the rice, glancing back at the clock from time to time. He slid five bowls of steaming rice toward Leon and ran to check on the dumplings again. When he took off the cover, the slight smell of burnt dough wafted out, and Vicente flipped the dumplings over to check. They were slightly burnt, but it wasn't inedible.

He passed Ling one of the dumplings to taste. When she bit into it, it audibly crunched, which seemed like a good thing until she shrieked and grabbed a piece of tissue paper to spit the bite of dumpling out onto. "It's cold inside!"

Grabbing the frozen bag, Vicente stared at the instructions, running his eyes down the tiny lines of information until he read:

_Add ¼ cup of water and cover to cook for 3 minutes._

The water! It must be what helped cook the dumplings without burning it. _How does Yao handle all this normally!?_ Starting to panic, Vicente grabbed the pitcher and splashed it over the dumplings, not bothering to measure the amount, and slammed the cover over it to cook again. By the time the dumplings' fillings cooked successfully, the kitchen table had already been set, and their steaming bowls of rice placed neatly on the placemats.

He could add "having less risk of undercooking food" into his list of why he preferred baking.

He shook the dumplings out of the frying pan and onto a plate, then carried it away from the kitchen counter. They smelled all right — as all right as frozen dumplings they'd bought on a discount could smell — but still didn't compare to the hand-wrapped dumplings that he'd had so long ago.

"Is Father not home yet?"

Leon shook his head, settling on the sofa in the living room with a book. "Should I go get Yao?"

"I'll do it." Vicente set the plate down on the table and went to Yao's bedroom.

Yao was shivering under his thin blanket when he walked in. A box of tissues was lying on his bedside table, and the small rubbish bin in the corner of the room was half-full with crumpled-up tissue paper. The room was freezing, but when Vicente neared his side he noticed that his forehead was beaded with sweat.

"Brother?" Vicente shook him. "Yao?"

"Hm?" Yao turned onto his back and squinted at him. "What's it?" His Northern accent sounded even more prominent.

"Dinner's ready. Do you want to eat here, or out in the dining room?"

He huffed, sitting up and shaking the blanket off, still shivering. "I have a fever, not SARS. Just give me a moment to brush my hair, and I'll be out." Yao waved a hand at him. "Now shoo, go make sure Yue Ling and Jia Long aren't burning the building down."

Slightly miffed that he'd been reduced to seem like nothing but the substitute babysitter, Vicente left the room, grabbing the trash can out with him. He threw the tissues into the larger trash can in the kitchen, reminded himself to take out the trash after they were done with dinner.

The door swung open and their father stepped in, taking off his coat and shoes and tossing his bag on the sofa. Leon and Ling chorused greetings, and Vicente was opening his mouth to do the same when he swept right past him and went to Yao's bedroom.

They'd be out sooner or later. Vicente sat down at the kitchen table. "Leon, Ling, it's time for dinner."

They didn't hear him. He ran out to the living room. "Time for dinner."

He had to repeat himself three more times before they followed him to the kitchen. Yao and their father came out a few moments later, Yao glassy-eyed and sleepy-looking, their father tight-lipped and clearly deep in thought.

After quite a while of silent eating, the only sounds being those of chopsticks clinking against bowls, their father finally spoke up. "Where's your mother?"

He was looking at Yao when he said that, even though he couldn't have known, having stayed in bed all day. Vicente answered the question after another minute of silence. "We haven't seen her all day."

"Really now?"

"If she'd been here," Leon said bluntly, "she'd be the one cooking us dinner, and we'd have more to eat."

Halfway through her bowl of rice, Ling murmured her agreement.

When dinner was over, they loaded the dishes into the dishwasher for the first time since moving — their father was too tired to wash the dishes, and after the cooking incident none of the three healthy siblings were exactly bouncing with energy. Yao went back to his room after mumbling "goodnight" at their father.

Far later, when it was one in the morning maybe, while Leon was still rereading comics under his covers and he was tossing and turning, trying to sleep despite the blinding flashlight, Vicente heard the door swing open and his mother return home. Then came harsh words that escalated into shouting again.

"You left the children to cook dinner again!" Their father shouted. "Yao is sick and I'm at work all day, and you're off _cheating_ while your three brats starve!"

Their mother shouted back, in knife-sharp Mandarin riddled with slang only Yao could've understood, and Leon's flashlight switched off, his comic fell to the floor and he pulled the covers over his head.

Not long after, his quiet sniffles sounded out, muffled slightly by the blanket.

By the time Vicente realised Leon was crying, he was already drifting off to sleep.


	12. French, Dinner and Peace

Back in primary school, when the family still lived in Taipei, English had been Vicente's worst subject.

His grammar had been all right, his writing scraped by. He didn't understand English sentences half as well as he did Chinese ones, but he'd managed to get eighties in spelling and grammar tests every year.

But his listening and speaking skills had been atrocious. Just the results from his listening tests had dropped his subject average to the low seventies, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that his skills in speaking were just as terrible. Vicente had once received a review sheet of his oral presentation, graded an unthinkable **17/50**. The only reason his parents never knew of his one and only failing mark was because they'd never asked him about it.

English was difficult, but after moving to Arlingdale, Vicente came to learn that French was even worse.

At least English only had "the", instead of "_la_" and "_le_". English only had "a", French had "_un_" and "_une_". Then there were those little strokes or hat-looking arrow things on top of the e-s, the squiggles under the c-s and somehow a combination of "o" and "e". All those looked a little like the _shēng diào_ of Mandarin, but were pronounced so strangely Vicente wondered how actual French people could speak the language without their mouths hurting.

Since he had to learn French in preparation for middle school, and Yao, who was already in middle school, had to suffer through his own French lessons, they often ended up doing their homework together.

It never went very well.

"_Je suise un garkon,_" Vicente repeated one day while doing his homework.

Yao looked up from his worksheets. "You don't pronounce the 's', I think."

"_Je ui un garkon,_" he tried again.

"You pronounce the first 's', but not the second one. That's how my teacher pronounces it."

"_Je suis un garkon._"

"Gar_çon_."

"_Je suis un garçon._" Vicente stared at his piece of paper. "But that's a 'c'."

"Yes, but it has the squiggle under it, so you pronounce it like an 's'." Yao gripped his pencil so tightly his fingertips turned white. "Yes, I know it's stupid."

"It's really stupid." He moved on to scrutinising the next sentence he had to practice. "Mandarin is way easier."

"You mean, like that time you mixed up _kàn_ and _kǎn_, and the zookeeper thought you going to kill the giraffe?"

The pronunciations for "see" and "cut" in Mandarin shouldn't be that similar, that was for sure. "It's still not as bad as — as — " Vicente pointed at his French worksheet. "This." He read out the next sentence. "_Comment ça va?_"

"That's how you say 'comment' in English. In French it's…" Yao had to think about it for a moment. "'_Comment_', or something similar."

"Those sound exactly the same."

"They're a little different."

"_Bon soir._" Then Vicente remembered what his teacher had said in class the other day; to pronounce the "oi" as "wah". "_Bon **soir**._" It still didn't sound perfectly accurate, but it was close enough. He moved on to his list of vocabulary. "_L'homme, la femme, le garçon, la fille, le chat, le chien, le cheval…_" he looked at the next word for a moment. "_L'oiseau?_"

Yao looked up again. "_L'oiseau._"

"That's what I'm saying," Vicente insisted, getting frustrated. "_L'oiseau._"

"No, _l'oiseau_."

Vicente rubbed his ears. "What?" When Yao repeated it, he asked, "how do you do that with your mouth?" He tried again. It sounded weird. He tried a second time, realised it was still wrong, and gave up. He moved on to the next phrase. "_Très bien._" He pronounced his r-s the way his teacher did, or he tried to.

Leon sniggered at him while doing his math homework. "You sound like you're coughing something up."

He pretended not to hear.

"Eurgh!" Leon made a hideous gagging noise like a cat hacking up a hairball. "You sound like that."

He continued playing deaf to his little brother's teasing and finished the fill-in-the-blank questions on the back of the worksheet. He never got all the questions correct, always putting in the wrong articles somehow, and Vicente knew he'd give anything to get his Chinese lessons back, even if it wasn't his best subject.

Next to him, Yao dropped his pencil and roughly shoved his French homework back into his homework folder, complaining, "I should've picked German." He yanked out a science workbook. "Or Spanish, or just not French." Yao flipped the workbook open with more force than was necessary. "Why isn't Chinese a choice? Or even Japanese or Korean. Those are similar to Chinese."

Half their school already consisted of Chinese or Japanese or Korean kids, and Arlingdale itself had so many Asian families that things like rice, dumplings and steamed buns (or at least poor imitations of those) weren't too difficult to find. There was even an Asian market just half an hour away from the town. "If we could learn Chinese, we'd be the best at it and that wouldn't be fair to everyone else, maybe," Vicente suggested.

"The French kids are getting an unfair advantage here."

"But there are no French kids in my class. I don't know any French kids at all."

"Mm, whatever." Yao went back to his math homework, and the siblings spent the rest of the afternoon doing their work in silence.

When the apartment door swung open at six o'clock, Vicente expected their father to be there, despite him usually not getting home until eight, but instead their mother stepped through, which was even more bizarre — on most nights, she wouldn't be home until all four siblings were in bed.

But he swallowed his shock and mumbled, "hello, Mother."

She ignored him (well, _that_ wasn't new) and went to the kitchen, muttering something under her breath as she did. Vicente went back to his homework. But then he heard the sound of a knife slicing something against a chopping board. He leaned across the kitchen table, whispering to Yao, "is Mother cooking dinner for us?"

Yao listened to the sound of chopping, then that of something being whisked in a bowl. "It sounds like it." He sighed in relief. "Since I don't have to cook tonight, I can _finally_ study for that history test I have on Thursday, and maybe I won't have to sleep that late…"

Vicente noticed the dark circles under his brother's eyes. He'd been staying up later and later, juggling schoolwork and taking care of him, Leon and Ling, and while that wasn't anything new, it couldn't be the ideal recovery method for someone who'd been bedridden with pneumonia just a week ago. "Let me cook next time you have a test coming up," he urged.

He shrugged. "We'll see about that."

Their mother switched the stove on, and the room began to heat up. In the March crispness, when warmth had yet to return, the heat wasn't unwelcome. Something bubbled in a pot, the scrape of sauce into a dish sounded and steam began to erupt from a pot.

Once he'd finished his homework, and double-checked that he didn't have any tests during the week, Vicente turned his chair around to watch his mother cook. She didn't notice him, as she sliced lotus roots, checked the pot on the stove and brought their meal together. Once the steaming dish was taken off the heat and carried to be kept warm in the oven, their mother poured a bowl of small white grains into a saucepan of water and heated that up in its place.

He wondered what those white grains were. It couldn't be rice, since those would be cooked in the rice cooker and there was no way that'd be enough for the entire family. Was it barley? Millet? Soy beans? After a while, his mother took the saucepan away and to the counter, where he couldn't see what she was doing, and his guessing game was over.

Then she took out their frying pan and heated it up, cooking the sliced lotus roots. They were stuffed with the white grains. He watched her cook the lotus roots, flipping them over once they were done on one side, and covering them with the frying-pan lid to steam.

The last time he'd gotten to cook with his mother, before everything went wrong, was during his second year living in Taipei. He and Yao had helped her make spring rolls, wrapping chopped shrimps and mushrooms in delicate rice wrappers, then deep-frying them until they were golden-brown and crispy. Their father had burned his tongue on one, and they'd all went out to get ice cream after that.

He was snapped out of his memories when the doorbell rang, and, at the same time, their mother called, "dinner's ready!"

Ling beat him to the door and let their father in, while Vicente cleared his folder and stationery to set the table. Yao put his history notes back in his school-bag and Leon emerged from his bedroom, clearly shocked from the sumptuous meal on the kitchen table.

Apart from the lotus roots, there was a dish of spare ribs steamed with black bean paste, sauteed sprouts and button mushrooms, and a soup (_oh, when was the last time they'd had soup?_) of coriander and tofu.

Their father interrupted the siblings' gawking at the food. "Well, are you going to look at the food, or eat it?"

A bite of the lotus roots told Vicente that they'd been stuffed with glutinous rice, and were so filling he could barely finish three of them. Leon grabbed another sparerib, Yao filled himself his second bowl of soup, and Ling reached over their mother to take a slice of lotus root.

Once everything was cleared up, and the dishes were all cleaned, they went off to their rooms. Vicente felt fuller than he'd been in a while, and he was sure his siblings felt the same way. For once, they were acting like an actual family without arguments, and though it surely wouldn't be the same tomorrow, he didn't care. It was a day of peace, and that was good enough.


	13. Falling Apart

Their mother's cooking of a full meal, it turned out, wasn't the last of its kind. Nearly every night afterwards, their mother continued to cook for them, laying out spreads that consisted of congee, actual not-frozen dumplings and on one occasion, even handmade noodles. Vicente stopped going to school hungry, and Yao's dark circles faded by the day.

Even the arguments stopped. Their father changed to be strangely subdued, never shouting at their mother, and she never shouted back, either. There was no more of Leon crying himself to sleep or Ling hiding under her desk while clutching her sketchbook. For a whole three months, things were peaceful.

But the peace was only the calm before the storm.

At the end of June, when the siblings received the results of their final exams and their report cards on the last day of school, the time of peace ended. Their mother returned home without the cheerful greeting they'd become used to, instead going straight to the kitchen to start making dinner.

While trying to sort out the mess of worksheets and notices in his folder, Vicente heard the familiar sound of chopping. He rifled through his papers one last time and got up from the kitchen table, heading for the kitchen counter where their mother was mincing a stalk of ginger. He tapped her on the shoulder. "Mother?"

She scraped the small pile of pureed ginger off the chopping board and into a dish.

"Mother?" Vicente repeated. "Can I help you cook?"

She reached for a sprig of spring onions and began cutting them up. Vicente went back to the kitchen table. Leon, who realised that their mother wasn't paying attention to them, resumed his search for a good place to hide his report card.

"Hide it under your pillow," Vicente suggested, watching Leon try to wrap his jacket around his report card.

"Then I'll see it every night." He pulled his report card out and stared at the window. "Should I just throw it out?"

"If you throw it out, someone is going to find a crumpled-up report card with _Leon Wang_ written all big and clear on the top and bring it back up. Then Mother will see the _D_ you got in math."__

_ _Leon crossed his arms. "At least I _passed_."_ _

_ _Those were his thoughts when he saw the _C+_ he got in French and the _B-_ in English, but Vicente decided not to say it. His little brother went back to brainstorming. "I could wash it down the sink."_ _

_ _"You'd block the sink, and we'll have to dig little bits of your report card up from the sink-hole-thing." No, it couldn't be called a sink-hole, that was a sort of hole that opened up in the middle of the street to swallow people. "From the drain, I mean."_ _

_ _"Should I set it on fire?"_ _

_ _"I don't trust you near fires."_ _

_ _"You were the one who nearly melted our frying pan!"_ _

_ _"That was _one time_." Vicente made a big show of covering his ears and began clearing up his mess of a folder, leaving Leon to his report card-concealing._ _

_ _Yao chose that moment to march into the kitchen, holding his own report card, and found Leon trying to jam his card up his shirt. "I'm gone for fifteen minutes, and I come back to you trying to _wear_ your report card?"_ _

_ _"There's no report card," Leon fibbed. "I never got a report card."_ _

_ _Vicente added helpfully, "he got a _D_ in math and doesn't want Mother to know."_ _

_ _He narrowly dodged the pencil-case Leon threw at him, as well as the accusation of, "tattletale."_ _

_ _"How about the rest of your subjects?" Yao set his report card down on the kitchen table; he could see the neat row of _A_s all the way down, except for the _B+_ in French that stuck out from the line of perfection. "I bet you did great in English."_ _

_ _"I got an _A_!" Leon said smugly. "And my teacher gave me a prize for having the most stories stuck on the board all year. She only sticks really good stories on the board."_ _

_ _Yao grabbed Leon's report card, which was sticking out from the top of his shirt. "English, _A_," he narrated loudly. "Math, _D_. Social studies, _B+_. Science, _B-_. Music — "_ _

_ _Leon screeched and tackled Yao, wrestling the report out away from him. Yao mock-groaned in pain and sank to the floor, holding an imaginary wound. "You killed me!" He cried. "You killed me like Claudius did to his brother in Hamlet!"_ _

_ _Vicente had no idea what that Hand-lute or Hamster or whatever was, but he didn't want to be the next one to get his grades announced, so, as usual, he hid his report card at the very back of his folder._ _

_ _Ling ran into the kitchen holding her own report card. "I got an _A_ in Art!"_ _

_ _"That's great." Leon peered at his sister's report card. "And for everything else…" He groaned. "Nothing below a _B_! How come I'm the only one with grades under _C_?"_ _

_ _"Because you don't study enough?"_ _

_ _"Shut up."_ _

_ _Then came the sound of the stove being switched on, and the sizzling of something being fried. Leon's stomach growled audibly, earning a dirty look from Yao. "But I'm _hungry_," Leon protested._ _

_ _He no longer had a reason to be hungry when five minutes later, their mother announced that dinner was ready. Then, since he was feasting on salty brown _muui choi_ with steamed tofu and a too-large chunk of rice, it took Leon another minute to finish chewing (he at least had the good graces not to talk with his mouth full). "This is really good," he said. "Ling, can you pass me some watercress?"_ _

_ _Ling pulled the pot of watercress soup farther away from Leon. She only succeeded in pulling it a few centimetres away, but Leon still gave her a dirty look. Sandwiched between the two of them, having been trying to get a piece of radish from across the table for ten minutes, Vicente silently wished he'd switched seats with Yao._ _

_ _After their father broke up the little scuffle between Leon and Ling, everyone fell into silence again. Vicente began thinking about how he'd spend his first summer vacation in the West. Unlike in Taiwan, his teachers hadn't assigned holiday homework, which meant more time to relax and have fun. But when he still didn't really have any new friends, nor was he familiar enough with Arlingdale to go off joyriding every day, he found himself longing for a stack of work. At least that would keep him occupied._ _

_ _When the family was living in Taipei, Yao would drag him and Leon out once they'd both finished their holiday homework, yammering on and on about how it was unhealthy to stay at home and read all day (Vicente never mentioned that that was what Yao did most of the year). They'd take the metro and go to the city, spending their pocket money on new books and snacks, then went to parks or handicraft fairs. Lunch would be eaten at a nearby convenience store, where Yao and Vicente would get hot fishballs and tea eggs that burned their mouth one too many times, and Leon, laughing as they fanned their mouths, would buy refrigerated rice balls instead._ _

_ _And sometimes, when both their parents weren't around, they'd take Ling (who, during the first few years, could barely talk) with them for dinner, which was normally spent at a nearby night market. The four of them would buy buns stuffed with minced beef and black pepper one night, sausages another, and sometimes finish their heavenly dinner with a bowl of cooling herbal jelly or bubble tea to prevent blisters. By the time September came and school begun, Vicente would've spent all of his allowance, and he'd spend the next ten months saving up for the next glorious summer escapade._ _

_ _Of course, there wouldn't be that sort of thrill or fun in Arlingdale, or even a twentieth of it. Maybe he'd finally pluck up the courage to get himself a card at the local library, and read the summer away, or maybe he'd ask his mother if she'd teach him how to cook, again and again until she gave him an answer that wasn't "we'll see" or "I'll tell you later". Maybe he'd help Yao prepare for high school and ask for advice on starting middle school. None of those things sounded very exciting, but he figured it was better than doing nothing._ _

_ _Suddenly their father spoke up, and though he was content contemplating his limited options for summer entertainment, he decided to listen._ _

_ _His voice was unusually serious as he asked, "do you all know what 'divorce' means?"_ _

_ _Leon's grin faded instantly. He stopped jostling with Ling, looked right at their father and nodded. His two older brothers followed suit. Only Ling stared in confusion, and shook her head._ _

_ _"It means that two people will end their marriage and live separately." That definition was close to what Vicente had thought to tell Leon during September. He swallowed another mouthful of rice as their father continued, "your mother and I have decided to get a divorce."_ _

_ _His brother had been right. Their parents would part ways, and despite who the siblings would be living with, they might not see the other parent ever again. Yao, who looked unsurprised at the news, asked, "why?"_ _

_ _"That is none of your concern." Their father said, a tinge of harshness creeping into his tone. Then he sighed. "But you all will continue living here, as usual, and the only difference will be that your mother will no longer be with us."_ _

_ _It didn't feel like the "only difference". With their mother gone, Vicente was sure that things would go back to the way it'd always been, with him and Yao rushing to cook, study and rest at the same time, Leon struggling with his work with nobody to answer his questions, and Ling still too young to understand anything. That was surely more than one difference._ _

_ _"Oh." Vicente surprised himself by saying, "all right. We understand." He didn't get it at all, really, but it seemed a nuisance to ask, so he immediately busied himself with getting soup instead._ _

_ _Next to him, Leon looked like he wanted to ask a million questions, but, like Vicente, he stood up and reached for the pot of soup._ _

_ _Later that night, for the first time in three months, their parents argued again. Trying to muffle the shouting from under his pillow, Vicente could only hear a few words of their fight — that everything was "for the best" and "for the children". He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think of something else._ _

_ _Loud coughing came from the other bed in the room, and Vicente poked his head out from under the pillow to see Leon crying harder than ever, shoulders shaking from under the blanket. He jumped out of bed and walked quietly towards his brother, pulling him into his arms and reaching for a piece of tissue._ _

_ _He didn't have any reassurances to offer. "We'll be fine" didn't sound like the right thing to say when they could very well not be._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cultural notes:  
_Muui choi_ \- a type of cured vegetable served in Cantonese dishes (it's really good).


	14. A Birthday Cake

Their mother left on the first of July.

It was Leon's eighth birthday, but when Vicente woke up early to surprise him, he found their parents' bedroom empty. Their father was out for work, but he couldn't think of any other reason for his mother's absence except that she'd left for good. Her side of the bedroom, usually adorned with photos and books, had been cleared. It was like she'd never been there at all.

The past two weeks had consisted of the gradual return of conflicts. Their parents had used words like "custody" and "visitation", none of which he'd understood. But what he had understood was that their mother had planned on taking Leon and Ling with her when she left. Somehow she'd changed her mind, and Vicente was grateful for that — his younger siblings were irritating at times, but there was no way he could live without them.

He was careful not to wake Leon up as he changed, brushed his teeth and went to the kitchen. There was a thick folder on the kitchen counter.

It took Vicente a while to realise what the contents of the folder were. Every piece of paper, some of them stained with different sauces, some of them stapled or paper-clipped together, was covered in their mother's handwriting. It seemed that not all of her had left.

They were recipes, all of them in a mix of simplified and traditional Chinese. He pulled out the first piece of paper, trying to read their mother's untidy scrawl. It took a while (he hated to admit it, but his Chinese was growing rusty), but he managed to decipher that it was a recipe for a chocolate sponge cake.

According to the recipe, it wouldn't take longer than an hour to make, and since it was only seven in the morning, Vicente was sure he could finish it in time to serve for breakfast when his siblings woke up. He hauled a chair from the kitchen table to stand on and reach the cupboard, and began to pull out the ingredients he'd need.

It was a simple recipe, thankfully not as complicated as the dishes their mother had made for dinner before, or the elaborate desserts she'd whipped up on special occasions. He sifted flour, measured out cocoa powder and separated egg yolks from egg whites, thinking of when he was tiny, cooking with their mother and Yao, when the nights weren't filled with shouting and things were simpler. There'd be no going back to those times, no matter how much he wanted to.

The electric mixer was heavy in his hands as he placed it into the bowl of egg whites, and Vicente nearly dropped it when he switched it on. He had to stand on his tiptoes to watch the egg whites slowly froth up, turning paler and frothier, until a whole minute passed and they'd turned as white and fluffy as clouds. With difficulty, he switched the mixer off and set it down, then folded his mixture of dry ingredients into the egg whites.

After a while of mixing, the mixture in the bowl began to look like an actual cake batter; Vicente had been expecting himself to mess up at some point and end up with a gloopy mess in the bowl. He left it there and dug in the drawers for parchment paper.

The edges of the paper were slightly ripped from when he'd pulled too hard, but it still fit alright in the cake pan. He pinched the parchment paper to keep it from folding away from the pan and reached for the bowl of batter again.

In went the batter. Vicente spilled a tiny bit of batter on the countertop, and a few drops more when he set the bowl down. He reached for the oven mitts and looked at the oven, suddenly coming to the realisation that he'd forgotten to preheat the oven. He set it quickly, then put the oven mitts on, hoping that the mistake couldn't cost him Leon's birthday cake.

In went the cake. The clock read **7:35**. That meant that it would be done by around **8:05**. He looked at the dirty bowls, spoons and mixer on the kitchen counter and reluctantly began to wash up. Vicente went through the electric mixer and the set of measuring spoons, placed them back into the cupboard and rinsed the bowl. He'd finish cleaning that once the cake was done.

Fifteen minutes of dilly-dallying later, the scent of chocolate began to fill the kitchen. Hopefully the cake would taste as good as it smelled. Vicente cleaned up the mixing bowl, dried it off with the grimy dish towel (_I'll have to put that in the laundry basket later,_ he told himself) and shoved it back into the closet, and grabbed a toothpick to prick the cake with.

It came out clean. He put his oven mitts back on and pulled the cake out, then set it on the kitchen counter to cool down. The sponge cake was a rich, dark brown and looked just like the photos their mother had included in the recipe, and though he couldn't find any candles to put on it, it looked every inch like a delicious birthday cake.

Vicente went back to the bedroom, where Leon was already awake and changed, writing something in a notebook. He looked up, snapping the notebook shut and tossing it behind his back like he hadn't even touched it. The notebook knocked the lamp off the bedside table the same time Leon said, "you're already awake?"

"Yes, and happy birthday," he said. "Now come out, I made something."

"What thing?"

"It's a surprise," Vicente replied.

"Have Yao and Ling seen it?"

He shook his head. "I'll get them, then we can all go to the kitchen for breakfast." He felt like smiling, but that would definitely give something away.

Yao was fast asleep, but Ling was messing around on his cell phone, having somehow guessed the password. She looked up as Vicente walked in. "Good morning."

"What are you doing with Brother's phone?" Was the first thing he could think of saying.

"Planting trees!" Ling showed him the screen. "His phone has lots of games."

"Oh. Er." He blinked. "Do you remember what day it is today?"

"Leon's birthday?" She tilted her head, saying, "and he's now… eight?"

"Yes, Leon's eight," Vicente said. "And I made him a birthday cake. Come out to eat it."

Ling jumped off her bed, leaving Yao's phone on her bedsheets and walking out of the bedroom. "Cake for breakfast?"

"Wait, we're having cake?" Leon popped his head out of his room and stared at the two of them. "Did we buy one?"

"You'll never know if you don't come out."

Once they reached the kitchen, Vicente gestured proudly at the sponge cake still in the pan. "I made you a cake. Happy birthday, Leon."

His brother peered at the pan and laughed. "The cake has a hole in it!"

"What?"

"Jia Long's right!" Ling pointed at the cake. "Look, it has a hole."

The cake, it turned out, had sunk while it cooled, leaving a miserable-looking crater right in the middle of the cake. Vicente poked it and it collapsed a little more. He forced himself to get a knife and slowly pry the cake out of the pan and onto a plate, then cut it into five equal portions. "I think it'll still taste all right, even with the hole."

His siblings each took a slice. The cake had ended up a little dense instead of being light and airy like he'd hoped, but it wasn't too bad.

"It's good," Leon said with his mouth full. Next to him, Ling nodded her agreement.

The slices of cake disappeared quickly, leaving only a small pile of crumbs on the table that none of them wanted to clean up. Vicente found a piece of clingfilm to cover up the cake tin and its remaining two slices, left his siblings to their own devices and went back to his room, taking his mother's folder of recipes with him.

He pulled out recipe after recipe, placing them side by side on his bed like an extra bedspread. Vicente recognised the recipe for handmade wontons that he'd helped with back in Hong Kong, then the one for almond cookies that Yao had memorised for New Year's Eve. He found recipes for some new dishes, too, too — recipes for Portuguese-styled egg tarts, walnut cookies, steamed red bean pudding and steamed custard buns.

After making Leon's birthday cake, and now that he was staring down at the enormous stack of recipes he could try, Vicente felt a rush of excitement through him. He managed to make something without the help of anyone else, and with the recipes, maybe he'd be able to cook (or at least bake) as well as Yao.


	15. Four Cinderellas

For all of two years, things were well again.

The first summer without their mother passed by in a blur. Vicente spent nearly every morning in the kitchen, trying out recipe after recipe. Some of his attempts went successfully, some not so much — his first time making coconut buns had ended in both Leon and Ling getting food poisoning and a refusal to touch his cooking for the rest of July. But everything was fine apart from that.

He and Yao took turns cooking, and though it was still tiring, it was nothing near the amount of stress they'd had cooking before. Sometimes, when their father couldn't make it home in time for dinner, Vicente would turn to their mother's recipes and the four of them would have dessert for dinner.

Middle school started for him, and it wasn't all that bad, or at least not as bad as Yao had made it out to be. He still couldn't pluck up the courage to talk to his classmates, but his English began to improve, and though French was still a particularly annoying challenge for him, he was getting better at it.

With Yao in high school and occupied even more than before with schoolwork and revision, Vicente took on the role of helping Leon with his homework. This usually meant him shouting out tips as Leon glared at his math homework and he tried to saute vegetables, steam eggs and keep the rice from overcooking at the same time.

And Ling grew, sometimes bringing friends home and chattering away in one small cluster in the living room while her brothers worked. Sometimes she'd never talk with them unless absolutely necessary, instead too consumed with messaging her friends on the family computer their father had brought one day. Sometimes Vicente passed her while she was using the computer, and caught glimpses of the drawings she made, miles better than the ones in her sketchbook.

In his second-to-last year of middle school, on the first day of school, Vicente received his first cell phone. It was a small touchscreen phone, unlike the one Yao had. He didn't have anyone to call or send messages to, but he managed to download some games on it and had something else to kill time with apart from reading and cooking.

Things were different, but it wasn't enough to shake him, not yet. His siblings were a constant in his life, something he was sure would never, ever change. That was until 2017, when, two years after their parents had divorced, their father remarried.

At first, the siblings were all ecstatic — there'd be someone to cook for them again, someone who could help with their homework and bring them out to the park and care about them. But the moment their stepmother walked through the door, it was made clear that their dreams of a complete family couldn't ever come true.

Their father told them that she'd moved from Kyoto three years ago, and, like him, had divorced two years ago. Along with their stepmother, their father also welcomed their stepmother's son to their family.

Their new stepbrother Kiku, who was fourteen and two years older than Vicente, was aloof and quiet from the start. He was given his own room, one that the siblings were always told was off-limits for them to enter before he moved in, and barely ever talked. When he did talk, it was to his mother, in quiet, rushed Japanese that none of them understood.

It was clear what their stepmother thought of them, with the way she eyed them in distaste every time she passed them, though she was careful never to voice her disdain out loud. Vicente once saw her pass by Ling while his little sister was drawing something on the computer, only for her expression to turn sour. She muttered something under her breath as she walked away, and though he had absolutely no idea what she said, he was sure it couldn't have been something nice.

Once, before his test the next day, Leon asked their stepmother to help him figure out some questions that he didn't get. What was meant to be a harmless study session ended up quite the painful ordeal, with remarks dripping with condescension and insults slung left and right and quiet insults that rose to shouts until Vicente, who was studying next to him, began to flinch at words that weren't targeted at him. Even after their stepmother left, leaving Leon to continue struggling with his work. It took Vicente fifteen minutes to stop his hands from shaking.

Not even Yao was free from their stepmother. The day the results for his midterm exams were released, their stepmother decided to talk to him in his room, apparently wanting to discuss his grades and, subsequently, his choice of university. Vicente couldn't catch the rest of their conversation, but he could tell from how Yao left his room a few minutes after their stepmother did, eyes rimmed red and fists clenched, that it probably hadn't gone so well.

Their father turned a blind eye to everything their stepmother did. Vicente never had his unfortunate run-in with her, and instead she'd simply ignore him completely. She probably didn't even know his name. Somehow, even though he was free of the horrible comments and degradation that his siblings were forced to endure, part of him wanted to be yelled at, or be subjected to the harsh words of their stepmother. As much as he was used to getting ignored, that might hurt less.

Kiku stayed silent through it all. Sometimes, during dinner, their stepmother would loudly compare him and Yao, shooting their oldest brother venomous glances after every other sentence. While Yao would protest the behaviour, insisting that he was every inch the dutiful, well-performing son as their stepbrother, Kiku never spoke up. And once, after another explosive argument that ended in slammed doors and crumpled paper, Leon had curled up on the sofa, clutching the torn, ragged remains of some of his best stories and cried, so hard that his tears surely destroyed what was left of the paper. Vicente, who was helping Ling with her homework, had done his best to console him, but Kiku, who was sitting right next to Leon, had merely turned the other way.

One evening, Vicente heard Leon complain about how horrible Kiku was for never stepping in to defend them against their stepmother. "We're all like Cinderella in this house," he lamented, "and Kiku is that repulsive stepsibling who lets us be treated this way. He's just as bad as his mother!"

He hadn't said anything. Before their father had divorced, Vicente had been no different — acting as the quiet, unacting bystander whenever his siblings were lectured, using the neglect he was familiar with to his advantage. Kiku was doing the same thing as he had all those years, so wasn't he just as bad?

Leon opened his mouth to badger him for his answer, but then their stepmother shouted from the kitchen, announcing that it was time for dinner.

Yao was setting the table with one hand and holding a notebook with the other, muttering chemical equations under his breath as he set placemats and chopsticks down. On the other side of the dining table, Ling and their stepmother were sitting together. Ling's face was red, and she looked just about ready to burst into flames as she demanded, "why can't my friends come over?"

Their stepmother's gaze was emotionless. "You will disturb your brothers from their studying. I know how much noise you girls will make, and the ruckus is not something I will tolerate in this house."

"But — "

"I said _no_." Her expression hardened. "You spend enough time with your friends at school. Why do you need to see them more than that?"

Ling looked like she wanted to protest further, but she scowled and got up, marching to Leon's side. "Stepmother is such a jerk," she muttered, "Father would've said yes, I should've asked him."

"Father never says yes to us these days," Yao said. "He doesn't know anything we're doing, either." Vicente realised he'd switched to Mandarin, most likely to prevent their stepmother from hearing.

"Maybe he's forgotten that he has other children." Leon took his seat at the kitchen table. "I bet he thinks Kiku is his only son."

Vicente sat down next to Leon. He listened to his siblings rant as dinner was brought out, as bowls of rice were passed around, as their father came out of his office and smiled at their stepmother.

Halfway through dinner, as he was picking bones out of a chunk of grilled mackerel, their father asked, "so what have you children been up to?"

He hadn't forgotten about them after all. Before anyone could answer, Vicente set down his chopsticks and answered, "I got the highest score in the class for a science test."

Their father raised his eyebrows, impressed. "Really? That's great, Ka Long."

What little pride he'd had for his achievement dissolved. "Father, I'm Ka Lun." Vicente nudged Leon. "_He's_ Ka Long."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Their father turned to Leon next. "Then how about you, Ka Long? Have you done anything similar?"

"My English teacher sent a note home last week." Leon sat up a little straighter. "She said I was doing really well."

Their stepmother added innocently, tossing a baleful glance at Leon, "if only we got nice notes from your math teacher, too. The only one we got was the one talking about how you failed your last quiz."

Leon recoiled like he'd been hit in the stomach. He stared down, struggling to compose himself.

Vicente watched Kiku through the exchange, nonchalantly reaching for a chunk of pickled daikon radish. He looked utterly bored and most likely wasn't listening to the conversation. Then he looked at Leon, who was flushed and blinking hard. He wanted to say something, to reassure his brother that one failing mark wasn't too bad, but nothing came out of his mouth.

When dinner was over, Kiku and Yao went straight to their rooms, Ling helped clear up the table and Leon sat down at the family computer. Vicente passed him and managed to catch a glance at the screen. He was on the notes app, and at the very top of the page he was beginning to type, "_The Story_".

Vicente turned away before he could see the rest of the title, but that was all he needed to know. It seemed that like Ling, Leon had found his own outlet for his emotions.

He said nothing and left his brother to his writing. He was no author; he couldn't think of any encouragement to spur him on, or any optimism that could raise him up from where their stepmother had put him down.


	16. No Other Choice

_[This chapter contains familial violence, or in other words, child abuse. This includes controlling behaviour and both physical and verbal abuse. Any readers made uncomfortable by these topics may want to refrain from reading, and a summary will be provided at the end of the chapter.]_

...

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here to celebrate the graduation of the class of 2019." Yao's high school principal smiled down at the audience. They were seated in the school's massive auditorium, staring up at the principal upon her podium. She continued, "each and every one of these students have left their mark at Redwood High, and though we're sad to see them go, we're even happier to see them make their own futures."

Leon yawned. Vicente reached over Kiku to jab him in the chest until his head stopped drooping, and gestured towards their stepmother, who was eyeing them like a tiger would its prey. Leon prodded him back with an indignant huff. Their stepbrother remained quiet.

A few more minutes of the principal's speech was enough to make him drift off; his middle school graduation ceremony hadn't been half as dull. Vicente looked at the banner behind the stage, where "**CLASS OF 2019**" was written in big bold letters. A row of teachers was seated on the stage, some of them looking just as bored as him. The principal droned on.

After what could've been five or fifty-five minutes (he _really_ hoped he hadn't fallen asleep midway), the principal ended her speech, saying, "now, let's welcome our graduating class with a huge round of applause!"

The entire auditorium seemed to come awake at that sentence, clapping and clapping as the first twelfth-graders began walking on stage in their gowns. Vicente craned up as much as he could without having to stand up, trying to catch a glimpse of his brother amidst the sea of students.

Yao was among the last of the students to go on stage, head held up high and carrying himself like an emperor. He stood at the very edge of the stage, where he was almost out of his family's sight. Then the principal continued talking, apparently inviting the valedictorian (_what was that?_) to deliver a speech.

To Vicente's surprise, Yao began pushing his way through his classmates and towards the podium. He tapped the microphone a few times, then began to speak.

Their father suddenly leaned over to whisper to the four siblings, "a valedictorian is the person who got the highest marks in the entire grade level. You should all be proud of your brother for achieving something like this."

He couldn't help raising his eyebrows in surprise. Yao, at the top of his class? It hadn't been a surprise back in Taipei, but in Arlingdale, with subjects like French and a tougher English syllabus, it seemed way harder to get top grades. Yet Yao had done it anyways. Leon and Ling looked impressed, while Kiku remained stony-faced. Their stepmother's face seemed to darken.

Yao delivered his speech in flawless English, without any of the accents that he'd been teased for when they first moved to the West. And when he finished, a few of the other high-school students — his friends, no doubt — clapped louder than the rest as he went to take his seat.

Then came the process of receiving the diplomas. The principal started with the last name "Adams", then "Bresson", then on and on, until an hour later right after somebody with the last name "Valdez" got their diploma, Yao's name was called. He stood up and crossed the stage again, taking the diploma with a huge smile. Vicente and his siblings clapped again, though he noticed that Kiku was glancing furtively at his mother while he did so.

Soon after, the ceremony ended and the graduates went off the stage to talk to their families. Vicente reached Yao first, stopping him at the end of the stairs. "Congratulations."

His brother's proud, elated expression faded to a nervous one when he saw their stepmother approaching. "Was my speech all right?"

"Huh?"

"I practiced so much, I really hope I didn't slip up…" Yao wrung his hands, retreating slightly against the wall. "Stepmother reviewed my notes last night, told me I couldn't make a fool of myself in front of her and Father, oh, goodness, if she thinks I did badly I don't know what she'll do!"

"It was fine," Vicente reassured. "Stepmother won't say a word." He noticed her just a stone's throw away from the stage, loudly telling Ling off for not paying attention during the ceremony while a few concerned families glanced at them.

Yao took off his cap and clutched it tightly. He still kept an eye on their stepmother and father, who were far away enough that they were out of earshot. "Today's the day all the universities I applied for let me know if I'm accepted. If I don't get in to at least one…" he squeezed his cap tighter, "if I don't get in to at least one of the universities I applied for, I don't know how Father or Stepmother are going to react!"

_Why's Brother so worried about university?_ Vicente thought. Yao was the one who got the scholarship into a private high school, who got an hour of sleep every night and studied round the clock, whose Grade Point Average was a perfect 5.0. There couldn't be any university who'd veto his application.

On the other hand, Vicente knew his time was running short. He'd start high school in September, and unlike Yao, he hadn't won any scholarships, nor were his grades Harvard or Oxford material. He shuddered to think about what their stepmother would say when she found out he was painfully average compared to Yao.

"Well done."

Their stepmother had reached the two of them, smiling sweetly enough to make a cat sick. She placed a hand on Yao's shoulder and said, "your father and I are so proud of you."

"Oh." Yao flinched. "Thank you."

"Yes, well done," their father echoed. His smile seemed a little more genuine than their stepmother's, although it still looked unnatural. Vicente stepped out of the way to let him stand in front of Yao. "With those grades of yours, I'm sure you can get into any university you want."

The drive home was rather pleasant, with their stepmother chattering on about some of the universities Yao had applied for and the friends she had who'd studied there. "I've heard that the University of Toronto has a lovely campus," she said, "and with all the street vendors around the area, you'll never go hungry. They say that Rice University has the best dormitories, though."

"I'll be able to give you tips if you choose the University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong," their father chimed in, "I got my Bachelor's degree there."

The atmosphere was so pleasant that Vicente expected their stepmother to drop a bomb at some point, to make a scathing comment and shatter everyone's good mood to pieces, but she said nothing of the sort. All the way back home, their stepmother was cheerful — almost too cheerful.

Not even lunch dampened their mood. Their stepmother served them all heaping bowls of _sōmen_ in a chilly broth of kombu and bonito, and grilled cod, and even made dessert: sweet, crumbly green bean cakes that only lightened the mood even more. While Vicente tried to split the last bean cake into five equal pieces, their stepmother even volunteered to get the mail from downstairs — something that she normally ordered one of them to do.

She returned with a pile of envelopes a few minutes later, just as the siblings were done with the bean cakes, turning her back on them at the kitchen counter to sort them out. No more than a minute later, though, when all the spam mail was sorted out, she gasped. "Yao!"

Yao nearly dropped his cup as he got up from the kitchen table. "What is it?" He asked.

"An acceptance letter!" She showed him the envelope, stamped with the crest of some university. "Look, you were even awarded a fifty-percent scholarship!"

He took the letter out of the envelope and read it. "I got in," he said slowly, like he was trying to believe it. Yao smiled. "Did I get any other letters?"

"That doesn't matter, now, surely you'll pick — "

"Stepmother, where are my other letters?" Yao looked through the pile of letters on the counter. "Did I get any?"

"That doesn't matter," their stepmother repeated. "Why would you need another choice?"

He looked at his letter, then at their stepmother. "Did you hide my letters?" He said slowly.

"This university is so close to home, you won't even need to pay for dormitories," their stepmother continued like she hadn't heard Yao at all, "and you won't get homesick, either. Isn't that wonderful?"

"Where are my letters?" Yao paced around the kitchen, looking in every nook and cranny, then back to the kitchen counter, laying out every envelope. "Where are they?" Back at the kitchen table, Vicente tried not to look. He could sense that both his brother and their stepmother were getting more agitated. "You hid them, I knew you did, you don't want me to amount to _anything_ — "

"_ENOUGH!_"

All four younger siblings winced at the sound of skin against skin. Vicente dared to look, hardly able to breathe, and his heart leapt to his throat when he saw the red slap mark on Yao's cheek. Their stepmother's hand was still outstretched, as though she wanted to slap him again.

Even when their mother and father argued, shouting and screaming from their bedroom, or lectured them about their grades, neither had laid a hand on them. Yao clearly knew this, as he raised one trembling hand to touch his face. His eyes blazed with a combination of pain, anger and shock.

"You ungrateful _brat_!" She hit him again, again, until Ling squeaked, covered her ears and began to inch out of the kitchen. Kiku followed slowly, eyes on the floor. "_Don't_ talk back to me, _don't_ doubt me, _don't_ turn against me! Accept it, won't you? Accept that you're too incompetent for any other school, that this local place is the only one good enough. Accept that you're not going to Harvard or Stanford!"

Before she could say any more, before she could strike Yao again, Leon jumped out of his seat and ran towards Yao. "Leave him alone!"

She grabbed his arm and wrenched him away, leaving him with angry red crescents on his forearm from where their stepmother's nails had dug in. Leon wiped his eyes and sat back down, face crimson with emotion.

"You will do what I say, do you understand?" Their stepmother advanced towards Yao again. He looked too defeated to fight back, not even flinching as she raised her hand again. "You will go to this rubbish school, you will learn what you can, and I will salvage a job for you with what little qualifications you have earned from your pathetic education. Do — "_Slap_. "You —" _Slap._ "Understand?"

Vicente, who'd felt frozen in place for most of the confrontation, mostly focused on not passing out, stood up. His heart thudded wildly; he clenched his fists, but he managed to shout, "stepmother!"

She ignored him.

"Stepmother!" He tried again, every strike scaring him more and more.

This time she looked at him, waiting to see what he'd say.

He opened his mouth to speak, looking at Yao. His nose was bleeding slightly, he had cuts on his cheeks and there was a line of bruises across his face. Whatever Vicente wanted to say couldn't come out.

She turned away, expression saying enough: "_you're not worth my time._" Yao grabbed his acceptance letter and stumbled out of the kitchen, head bowed, and Vicente and Leon had no choice but to follow.

He could feel their stepmother's gaze burning into them even from behind.

The rest of the day passed like they normally did, with their stepmother acting like the borderline-tyrannical overlord that she normally was. Vicente hid in his room, trying to block out the echoes of their stepmother's shouts, which were somehow a hundred times more terrifying than any argument he'd heard their mother and father have.

At least Kiku was more civil. An hour after lunch, he brought a basin of warm water and a towel into Yao's room and helped him wipe his face clean, asking Vicente and Leon to fetch bandages to patch up what could be fixed. His hands shook a few times while he was wringing out the towels; he was clearly just as shaken as they were. Vicente even saw him giving Ling a packet of biscuits when she started crying.

After dinner, which had passed with nobody saying anything about Yao's injuries, Vicente decided to take out the trash before their stepmother flew into a rage again.

While carrying the trash bag down to the nearby trash collection, he noticed a slip of paper poking out from a tear in the bag. It looked like a label, but he looked closer, and noticed the bold caption: **Cambridge University**.

It couldn't have been a rejection letter. Holding his nose, Vicente opened up the trash bag and found a pile of shredded paper on top of the food waste. All of them claimed to be letters from prestigious universities, and on quite a lot of them he saw the word "accepted".

Yao was right, but what could be done? Every other accepted letter was torn up and covered in trash. Vicente closed the bag again and set it down, returning to the apartment complex feeling numb. He couldn't find the nerves to tell Yao what their stepmother did, not after she'd hurt him just for accusing her of the action. What he didn't know couldn't hurt him.

...

_[Summary: Yao has graduated from high school, and he receives his university acceptance letters once he gets home. However, when he only receives one letter from a local school, he becomes suspicious that his stepmother has disposed of the rest. He doesn't get his answer, as his stepmother hurts him viciously for even questioning her. Kiku has begun treating his stepsiblings kindly, helping Yao, Leon and Vicente after the fight with his mother. While taking out the trash, Vicente discovers the torn remains of the rest of Yao's acceptance letters, but decides not to tell him about it.]_


	17. Free

In the four years Yao was off for university, he was a ghost.

Every day, when he came back from school and began tackling his homework, Vicente never saw Yao. He almost never left his room, never spoke to any of the siblings, never smiled or joked or shared stories any more. It was like going to university had broken his spirit.

The only time Vicente saw Yao was during dinner. His older brother always had shadows under his eyes, his shoulders slumped with something more than exhaustion. That wasn't new, but the proud gleam in his eyes was gone, replaced by something dull that looked like defeat. Even then, he never got the chance to talk to Yao. The moment he set his chopsticks down, he was gone, back into his room to bury himself in schoolwork. He couldn't talk to him during the weekend, either — every Saturday and Sunday, Yao left the apartment complex before he woke up and returned after he fell asleep. Their stepmother remarked waspishly that he was probably consorting with gangsters to cheat his way through university.

It was like he'd lost his brother, the same one who'd taught him how to cook and complained about French with him, the brother who carried him to look at the nightlife of his hometown and told him stories in Mandarin, and saw him replaced by an empty shell of who he once was. Every day, Yao seemed to change more and more, until it seemed that he wasn't just a shell of himself, but an entirely different person.

By the time he'd reached the end of his second year in university, Yao had let his hair grow out, ignoring their stepmother's various attempts to get his hair cut and tying it in a short ponytail to keep it out of his eyes. Leon once joked that he looked like an imperial Chinese philosopher who sat by lotus ponds all day and thought about life.

Kiku graduated from high school at around the same time. He, unlike his stepbrother, was able to choose where he went, though Vicente noticed that he still picked a university close by. The conflict between Yao and his mother, which seemed like such a long time ago, was clearly still on his mind.

Their stepmother once lamented that she and their father had been spoiling Yao, buying him his own laptop for university and not saying much when he grew his hair out. Nobody said anything about how she'd always treated Kiku better — not kindly, only better. Even after four years, she treated Vicente with nothing but disinterest, passing him by at home like he was a ghost, never making eye contact with him, never speaking to him.

Once, while bringing a pile of laundry to Ling and Yao's room, Vicente noticed that Yao's side of the room looked plainer than usual. The shelves weren't as packed with books, his desk was less cluttered and, as he found out when he opened the musty drawers, he looked like he had far less clothes than he used to. But Vicente chalked that up to Yao losing things, which wasn't unusual, and said nothing about it.

Then more things started disappearing. More and more, until it was clear that it wasn't just Yao's absent-mindedness. Vicente had gone into Yao's room one day with another load of laundry, opened his drawers and found all but the very bottom one, which was filled mostly with tightly-sealed envelopes and taped-shut notebooks, empty. In fact, by the time Yao reached his final year of university, just a few months away from earning his degree, barely anything was left in his room.

But Vicente had more important things to worry about by then. He'd graduate high school soon, and he had sent out his university applications a while ago. June, when he'd take his public exams and figure out what to do for the rest of his life, was creeping closer and closer. Their stepmother would definitely disapprove if he picked a university far from Arlingdale, unlike Kiku and Yao, he thought. Or would she not even care? Did she even know he existed?

Hopefully, he was insignificant enough to her that she'd leave him to do what he wanted, though he wasn't sure what that was. Yao was studying accounting, as per their father's request, and neither parent had protested too much when Kiku announced he wanted to study literature. They'd definitely say something if he told them he had no idea what course to take.

Then May came.

Yao graduated a month before Vicente was due to, but his university graduation was in every aspect different from his high school one. He had no speeches to give, for one, and right after the ceremony, before any of the siblings or their parents could reach him, Yao _disappeared._

When they got home, they found Yao's side of his and Ling's shared bedroom completely deserted — everything inside was gone. His laptop, his books, his clothes all seemed to have been taken away, and even his bedsheets had been taken off the bed. It was like Yao had never lived in the apartment.

Vicente tried calling Yao, but every call he made was met with an automated voice mail. Ling posted "**LOST**" signs everywhere, and Leon ran around town every day after school looking for him, but there was no sign of him. Wherever he'd gone, Yao was apparently determined not to let his family find him.

The disappearance had shaken them enough that their stepmother hadn't tampered with Vicente's university reply letters. He'd chosen a university in a city two hours away from Arlingdale that he got a scholarship into, picked a course that didn't sound too hard, and sent the reply before their stepmother could change her mind. But even that didn't take his mind off his vanished brother.

"What if he's _dead_?" Ling asked. "Or arrested, or sick, or grievously injured? Brother got sick of the way Stepmother was treating him, of course, and I bet he's run off and gotten himself into some twisted mafia battle across the nation."

"_Twisted mafia battle?_" Leon blinked.

"You never know with Brother! He's been so secretive these four years he could secretly be a spy for all we know. He's got the brains for it."

Leon stopped talking to her after that. Vicente, listening to them talk while he looked up secondhand textbooks on the family computer, wondered himself. Had Yao went off to find himself a job and a new home? Or was he couch-hopping and regretting his decision to leave?

They got their answer in July.

A very long text message was sent to Vicente's phone, so long that it took up all of the screen. It was addressed to all four of Yao's siblings, reading:

_Jia Lin, Kiku, Jia Long and Yue Ling,_

_You four are probably very worried about me right now. If not, I feel slightly insulted. But anyway, don't worry any more. I'm fine. I'm in a city a couple of hours away from here, living in a small apartment and working odd jobs. The city's called Trofilos, and it's not bad. There's an art store here that Ling would enjoy, and the public library's huge, too._

_I've saved up for this apartment since starting university, and all my old things from Arlingdale are there, I started moving four years ago. It's not much, but big enough to fit all five of us if we share. I'm not working to afford a bigger apartment, though. I'm opening a restaurant._

_Yes, I've never cooked or learned to cook professionally. I can practically see Leon rolling his eyes now — I bet he thinks I can't do it. But I think this restaurant will scrape by, I'll be able to make something of myself without our parents' interference and so can you._

_I don't want you all to end up like me — my future determined for me before I could make up my mind. Jia Long, Yue Ling, you two are still in high school, you can keep our parents from butting in on what you do if you stay with me. I know for sure that Stepmother would not approve of your taking creative writing or art. And Jia Lin, I know you're starting university this September. If it's close to Trofilos, maybe you can come along. Kiku, you're welcome to join us if it doesn't hinder your studies._

_I hope you'll take me up on my offer. I have enough room for you four, and we can all work at the restaurant, earn a little more cash. I can't be the parents we needed, but I can try to be the brother who's a little better than them._

_Best,_

_Yao_

_P.S.: Delete this soon, don't let Stepmother see._

After reading the messages, all was silent for a moment.

Leon was the first to speak. "Who sends text messages like that? If Brother wanted to write it in such a fancy way, he should've sent an email."

Ling stared at the screen like the message was still there. "We can leave? We can _really_ just leave?"

Kiku's expression was one of disbelief. He was off in his own world as he got up and left the room.

Vicente's hands shook as he replayed Yao's words. Could he really escape this household where he was invisible and unwanted? Could he work, study, live like somebody who was desired and needed, who wasn't just a typical side character in someone else's story? It helped that he just happened to have sent his reply letter to Trofilos University, so he wouldn't have to travel too far from what he hoped could be his new home.

That night, Yao sent them the address to his new apartment and the spot he was hoping to rent to start his new restaurant. It was pretty far, the only way they could reach it without their parents finding out would be by train, and only Kiku had the money to afford the tickets.

Right before he and Leon were going to go to bed, Kiku went into their room and pulled a few banknotes out of his pocket, then handed them to Leon. He whispered something to Leon, gave him a rare smile and left the room without saying anything. The next morning, Vicente woke up to find Leon's bed empty. His favourite notebooks and novels were gone from his desk.

This time, Vicente got the message of Leon's safe arrival the afternoon he left. "_Kiku helped pay for the ticket,_" part of it read, "_if you ask, I'm sure he'll pay for yours too. Tell Ling I say hi._"

He did, and Ling grabbed his phone to type her reply. "_... hope you're safe, have fun, I'll join you two soon. By the way, the apartment looks really boring. Did Leon not bring his posters?_" Were among her ending remarks. After she handed him his phone back, she said quietly, "can't believe those two would leave, just like that." She looked around his room, at the stacks of books balanced haphazardly on bedside tables and the rumpled, unmade sheets, the pieces of paper strewn everywhere. "Was it really that bad?"

She continued when she was met with silence. "Stepmother was horrible, yeah, and Father and Mother argued all the time. But I remember when I brought my friends over during the holidays, and I'm still proud when I look at the medals and certificates I have pinned on my wall." Ling smiled wistfully. "Plus, I still have three years of high school left, and I don't want to have to go through the 'new kid' thing again at a new school."

She wasn't wrong. Their apartment still held some good memories, even if the negative ones outweighed them. Vicente thought of the many hours he'd spent in the kitchen, experimenting with their mother's old recipes and helping Yao with the cooking; of dinners that weren't so bad, when everyone could get along; of snowball fights and petty bickering and exchanging advice. Maybe Yao would come back one day, fix everything their stepmother had done, make life be like those rare happy days.

He knew that was impossible, though.

Ling went into his room a week after Leon's departure looking apologetic. "I've thought about it for seven days now."

"What's 'it'?"

"Whether I should leave." She twisted her fingers, eyes sweeping around the room and looking everywhere but Vicente. "I'm still not very sure, but I'm certain about one thing. I think I'm willing to get rid of the few good memories I had here to make new, better ones in Trofilos. The key word here is 'think', though." Ling gazed out the window. "What if the restaurant fails? What if Yao loses all his money, and we can't afford rent anymore? What will we do then?" Her final remark was quieter than the rest. "I don't know if we should leave this secure home for one that we might be evicted from any day, even if it meant getting our freedom."

Her empty bed the next morning told Vicente that she'd figured out the answer.

The next two weeks were awkward. He and Kiku were the only two of the siblings left in the apartment, an elephant in the room their parents refused to acknowledge. They'd never put up search warrants, never asked for help. But again, it wasn't like anyone would notice the three disappearances.

On the thirty-first of July, at one in the morning, Kiku walked into his room and shook him awake, then handed him a train ticket. "I bought it this evening," he explained sleepily. "I thought I'd save you the trouble of buying it yourself when you get to the station."

He blinked at the ticket. "What? I'm not leaving."

"You look like a neglected dog in here. Always waiting for someone to notice and care about you, when there's nobody of that sort around."

"That's blunt."

Kiku shrugged. "It's the truth. You would do far better with Yao. Better than you'd be if you stayed here with Mother, at least." He set the ticket on the bedside table. "The train for Trofilos leaves at four. You'll have enough time to pack what you need and leave, so do it quickly. When I wake up again later today, I don't want to see you here."

Vicente rolled out of bed sleepily and stretched. "What about you? When are you leaving?"

"I'm not. If Mother finds out that _I'm_ gone too…" he didn't dare finish the sentence. "I have two years to go until graduation. I can hang in there." Kiku wiped his eyes. "Now go. I promise I'll visit."

His stepbrother had definitely grown from that arrogant, quiet bystander from all those years ago. Vicente smiled at him as he began to pack. "Thanks, Kiku. And goodbye."

He packed quickly, not allowing himself to dwell on any sentiments that might make him want to stay. An hour later, he'd packed enough clothes, toiletries and other necessities that would probably keep him afloat for a while. Vicente carefully placed their mother's battered old recipe file at the very top of his duffel bag and zipped it shut.

All was quiet as he stepped outside his room. He put on his shoes, opened the door and took the elevator down, carrying the heavy duffel bag. Soon, he was standing in front of his apartment complex and staring up at the building. It had been his home, his sanctuary, his prison for ten years, and now he was leaving it behind.

He turned away and began to walk to the train station.


	18. A Restaurant and A Home

Trofilos looked like what would happen if somebody took Berlin, Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo and pretty much every other big city in the world and combined all of them. It seemed that every other person walking down the street was speaking a different language, and many of the shops' signs were bilingual.

Ever since he'd arrived at the city, Vicente had been trying to get used to staying at yet another unfamiliar place. Unlike Arlingdale, where only Japanese and Korean were alien to him, Trofilos seemed to have a bit of everywhere in the world in it, and it felt so international that the UN headquarters could be located there and nobody would be surprised.

On the day he arrived, after he'd barely set his bags down, Leon had dragged him around the city on an unofficial tour. Having gotten around two hours of sleep the night before, Vicente barely remembered any of it, but he had vague memories of boys yelling at each other in German, a mother making a phone call in rapid-fire Farsi, and almost getting run over by a car then being screamed at by the Portuguese-speaking driver.

Surprisingly, he and his siblings appeared to be the only Chinese people in Trofilos. The spot Yao had rented out for his restaurant stuck out with the huge Chinese characters on the sign, especially since it was sandwiched between two of the few stores in the city with English-only signs.

The characters "_王記_" — "Wang's" — were painted dark red on the white sign, bordered by drawings of plum flowers and birds, no doubt Ling's work. The inside of the restaurant was still pretty empty with only a few round wooden tables scattered around the still-bare walls, looking a little like the tea restaurants he'd been to in Hong Kong with their geometric tiled floors and plain furniture. The kitchen was the fullest part of the place, of course, being twice the size of the kitchen in Arlingdale and a million times better-stocked.

Even the apartment above _Wang's_, where they'd stay once the day was through, felt nicer and more welcoming than their old one. It was smaller, messier (a lot messier) and older, but it made Vicente think of the tiny apartment he, Yao and Leon had stayed in when they were living in Hong Kong. Even though they bickered almost every day about who'd get to shower first and blamed each other for using up all the hot water, Vicente felt more at home than he'd ever been. But again, his previous homes had consisted of arguing parents and passive-aggressive, controlling stepmothers, so the bar was set pretty low.

He and Leon shared a room, as did Yao and Ling, just like they had all their lives. The only difference was that he and Leon slept on bunk beds; he took the top bunk while Leon took the bottom. It was the other way around for the first few days he lived at the apartment, but after Leon rolled off his bunk in his sleep and broke his nose, he proposed swapping bunks to protect the rest of his face. Vicente didn't mind, especially since it meant he wouldn't have to clean blood off the floor another time.

A week after he arrived, _Wang's_ officially opened. Yao announced that he'd somehow do all the cooking, while Leon and Vicente acted as waiters and Ling ran the register. Vicente had no idea how his brother would manage all the orders and make sure they were served hot, all at the same time all by himself, but he didn't protest. Even as he watched Yao whip up dish after dish and longed to join him, he stayed silent and tried not to wince when he picked up the hot plates and bowls.

They didn't get that many customers. Maybe it was because of where they were located in Trofilos, or the fact that _Wang's_ didn't look all that flashy, or maybe people just didn't like Chinese food, but unlike the other bigger restaurants around, only a few people showed up every day — enough that they could scrape by with rent and buying ingredients, but that was all.

Sometimes in the kitchen, Vicente found Yao making dishes he'd never seen in years. One afternoon, one customer ordered wonton noodles. Another night, he carried a plate of barbequed pork with a savoury-sweet glaze of honey and soy sauce to a table. When the restaurant closed, Ling brought a few bowls of leftover _tofu fa_ back to the apartment along with a bag of yellow sugar for them to tuck into. It was like Yao was travelling back in time with his cooking, bringing them back to their childhood years.

He never made any of the dishes their stepmother had served, and nobody said anything about it.

Every week, Yao sent one of them to the Asian market back in Arlingdale to buy the ingredients they'd need. Vicente had went once, wondering just how somebody could possibly stuff forty-eight different cultures into one market, and ended up staying for so long Yao had to call him to make sure he hadn't been in trouble.

The market was like a world of its own, selling everything from pearl rice to _tempe_. Some customers bargained in Japanese, some shopkeepers advertised their goods in Hokkien, groups of shoppers gossiped in Tagalog. It took Vicente ages to find a stall that sold what he needed to buy, and even then the shopkeeper had told him prices in such speedy Mandarin that he'd almost died of embarrassment as he asked her to repeat them. He'd left with bags full of dried tofu puffs, both dark and light soy sauce, winter melons and more.

The best surprise arrived when he found Kiku at one of the stalls, bartering with the shopkeeper to lower the prices of his _niboshi_. Vicente yelled his name from five stalls away, waving when his stepbrother spun around in search of him, looking alarmed. Then they'd left the market and shared a box of the _niboshi_ — baby sardines marinated in soy sauce and mirin — while chatting. Their stepmother, according to Kiku, was still blatantly ignoring their disappearances, while their father was too preoccupied to work to do anything about it. Vicente gave him the address to _Wang's_ and their apartment, assuring him that he still had a place with them if he wanted to leave, and the restaurant could use another pair of hands.

Kiku had refused again with a sad, defeated smile; their stepmother had apparently secured a spot for him in their father's company for when he graduated university. "Maybe one day," he'd said wistfully. "I'd love to see the rest of you again. If I ever find the guts to stand up to Mother, I'll come work at your restaurant." He picked up another sardine by the tail and popped it into his mouth. "I don't think I'll ever be as brave as you four, but I'll try."

They parted once the sun set, and Kiku gave Vicente a box of homemade _matcha_ cookies to share with his siblings. Then he'd left for Arlingdale, and Vicente for Trofilos.

It had hurt, seeing Kiku walk back to a household where he was mistreated and looked down upon, but he wanted to stay, and Vicente doubted he could convince somebody as stubborn as Kiku to change his mind. Still, as he looked at his vanishing silhouette in the fading light, Vicente thanked Kiku for giving him the final push he needed to leave.


	19. The Boulangerie

Having resigned himself to the fate of only being a waiter at _Wang's_, Vicente hadn't expected Yao to sit him down after dinner one long day and present him with a thick stack of paper. The first piece of paper was half-covered in words, the other half in hastily-drawn pictures. After taking a closer look at it, he realised that they were recipes. "What's all this?" He asked.

Yao dropped his notepad onto the stack of paper. "Do you remember all the pastries we bought before we moved to Arlingdale?"

"You can't just answer a question with another question —" Vicente caught himself. "Not really. I remember egg tarts and curry puffs from Hong Kong, and different buns from Taipei, but not really."

Vicente jumped when Yao slammed a hand down on the stack. "All of these are recipes for pastries — well, pastries and desserts. I did my best to look up what I forgot, and I looked through that folder Mother left behind."

"You mean the folder I hid in my closet that you somehow found?"

"Whoops."

He lightly kicked Yao under the table. "Whatever. But these…" he gestured at the stack. "They're _all_ recipes?"

"That's what I said." Yao began flicking through the stack, showing him pictures of pineapple pastries, turnip pudding and even more sweet treats he thought he'd forgotten about. "I got recipes for tofu skin sweet soup, red date pudding, taro balls, all the stuff we've had before." His eyes gleamed. "Imagine if we could serve this all at our restaurant! People _love_ desserts, this will give us the chance to strike gold."

"But you're already cooking all the food," Vicente pointed out. "Can you handle all the orders if we expanded the menu?"

He shook his head. "Of course I can't. That's why I want you to help me." Before Vicente could butt in, Yao continued, "ever since we were young, you've always loved making desserts. Starting from next week, I can make the main dishes, and you can make the desserts. It'll be like we're kids again!"

When he and Yao were kids, they nearly collapsed from exhaustion every day from cooking, studying and taking care of Leon and Ling, and it was a challenge to stay awake at school, but he didn't mention it. It would be nice to get to work in a kitchen for fun instead of for survival. "I guess I could do it," Vicente said slowly, "but your stack of desserts here is as thick as a copy of _War and Peace_. There's no way I'd be able to memorise them all _and_ cook them well."

_If professional pastry chefs can do it, so can you,_ was probably what Yao was thinking, but he shrugged. "We don't have any desserts on the menu yet. We can add a few right now and add some more if people like them." He pulled out two pieces of paper. "We can start with Portuguese-styled egg tarts and custard buns. They're not too hard to make."

He was already starting to feel excited, thinking about kneading dough and making custard and feeling the stuffy heat of the oven. "That sounds good." Vicente took the recipes and looked over them, trying to make sense of Yao's messy handwriting. Next week couldn't come any sooner.

...

It took Yao a day before the desserts were to be added to the menu to find a problem.

He flurried into Vicente's room at seven in the morning, making Leon fall off his bunk (thankfully he didn't break his nose again) and climbing up the ladder to shake him awake. "We don't have time to make the puff pastry!"

He squinted at his brother, only seeing a blurry, flesh-coloured blob as he fished for his glasses. "Hah?"

"We need puff pastry to make the egg tarts, and we don't have the time to make the dough and roll it out and laminate it and things!" Yao's face came into focus as Vicente put his glasses on. "We'll need to buy ready-made pastry."

"Oh." Vicente blinked, rubbed his eyes and cracked his neck. "Okay."

"There's a big bakery in the nicer part of Trofilos that sells some, I think." Yao grabbed his arm and tried to pull him off his bunk, acting remarkably like Ling when she was a kid. "Go buy some there."

Vicente tried not to step on Leon, who had fallen back asleep, as he climbed down his bunk. "At seven in the morning?"

"Yes, at seven in the morning!" Yao stopped to haul Leon back into bed. "Tell Ling to take you there, she knows the way."

After a hasty breakfast and five minutes of a very cranky Ling cussing Yao out with swear words he didn't even know existed, they left the apartment and began walking towards a bus stop. The air was still crisp and cool, and birds were shrieking at each other in the trees.

"Why can't we go later in the morning?" Ling kicked away a stray can as she walked. "I haven't gone out at seven in the morning on a _Sunday_ in, like, six years."

"You were awake, though."

She stretched, nearly hitting Vicente in the face as she did. "I was going to watch the premiere of my favourite band's newest number." A bus rolled up at the stop, and they climbed on. "Hopefully I'm not too late by the time we reach that bakery place."

"How far away is it?"

Ling took a seat by the window. "It only takes ten minutes to reach the stop, and it's right across the road."

He noticed that she was idly tossing her phone up and down as she talked and prayed that it wouldn't fall. "I hope the puff pastry won't cost too much. If we have money left, maybe we can pick up some coffee afterwards."

She perked up at the sound of that. "Oh, coffee. That would be awesome."

The bus rolled to a halt and Ling stood up. "We're here."

They got out in front of a tall, fancy building that looked older than the ones surrounding it. "That's the city hall," Ling explained. "They hold dance lessons there sometimes."

Before he could ask why Ling knew, she grabbed his wrist and walked him across the road, where their destination was. The sign above the bakery was painted baby-blue, with glimmering gold paint writing its name in sloping cursive.

"_Boulangerie Bonnefoy_," he read out loud. "I'm guessing this is the place Yao was talking about."

"Oh, no, he wants us to get puff pastry from that bookstore." Ling snorted and pushed him towards the bakery. "Go do your thing. I'll wait for you in the city hall."

Then Ling went back across the road to the city hall, where she was probably going to watch her band premiere, and abandoned Vicente in front of _Boulangerie Bonnefoy_.

The bakery's glass doors were covered in pastel paintings of different types of bread, and a cheery sign that read "OPEN" swung from the doorknob. Through the glass, he could see a pair of round tables on either side of the bakery, waiting for customers to sit at. A glass case was underneath what looked like the cashier at the very back of the bakery, filled with stands of cakes.

But none of those compared to the shelves. The one on the right side was stacked with more types of bread than Vicente could name; in one bucket were a dozen _baguettes_, on the top shelf what looked like five different types of _brioche_ were neatly arranged in a row. The left shelf had see-through cases displaying an impressive assortment of pastries — _croissants_, _millefeuilles_ and _éclairs_ galore. He'd never seen anything like it.

Then he decided that he'd gawked enough and stepped into the bakery.

The entire place was filled with the heavenly scent of melting butter, and soothing jazz music played in the background. Though he'd never been to France, it felt like the owners of the bakery had somehow taken a part of the country of love and brought it to this tiny city. Vicente approached the left shelf to take a closer look at a _croissant_. Its many layers were glossy with egg-wash, a beautiful golden-brown colour from caramelisation. It almost looked unreal, like a plastic model and not something a baker had spent precious time and energy making.

"Oh, those took me years to perfect."

Vicente turned to see somebody standing at the counter. His blue eyes sparkled, and he undid his hairnet to let his blond hair down. His apron was smudged with dough, flour and what looked like caramel, and he took it off before continuing, "_croissants_ can be a pain to make, even after all this time. Every time I do, my hands smell like butter for hours afterwards." The man laughed. "But I guess it could be worse, so I shouldn't complain."

"They're very nice," Vicente observed. "Do you make the dough yourself?"

He only realised that that was a stupid question after the man gasped. "Of course! Here at _Boulangerie Bonnefoy_, we make everything by hand. By the way, I haven't seen you around before. Are you new to Trofilos?"

He nodded. "I was told that I could get some good puff pastry here."

"Ah, the very type we use in our own recipes." The man gestured behind him, at a door that undoubtedly led to the kitchen. "Just tell me how much you'll need, and I'll go to the fridge and get — "

They both jumped as a loud "BEEP" echoed throughout the bakery. The man hastily put his apron and hairnet back on, glancing at the door. "Oh, dear, those must be the _macarons_. Excuse me for a moment, you know how finicky those things are." He laughed, though this time it sounded a little more harried, and ran into the kitchen.

The door began to close at snail-speed, and through the crack Vicente could hear the man shouting, "Madeline, there's a young man outside who wants some puff pastry. Go get some for him, won't you?"

A girl, presumably Madeline, shouted back, "I can handle the _macarons_, you go out and deal with him. You saw him first."

"You're going to make the shells sink while you're daydreaming like you did last time."

"I will not!"

The door was about to close. Vicente stared at it awkwardly, trying to block out the bickering.

"Yes, you will. Come on, we both know I can work with these better. Now go get the puff pastry, _d'accord_?"

A refrigerator door slammed inside the kitchen. A few moments later, Madeline stepped through the door. Her hairnet was askew, her apron half-off, and she was glaring at him through her glasses. She muttered something under her breath and set down the frozen packet of puff pastry none too gently on the countertop. "Is this enough?"

"What?"

Madeline tugged her hair net off. A neat braid, the end tied in a maroon ribbon, tumbled over her shoulder. "Is this enough puff pastry?" She asked. "If not, I'll go inside and get more." Vicente noticed that she had the same golden hair, the same blue eyes as the man who'd disappeared inside the kitchen. Where they siblings?

"Oh." He blinked. "Yes, I'll need quite a bit more than that. Er… probably at least a kilogram, to be honest."

She couldn't hide her surprise. "Are you going to be cooking for a small army?"

Vicente couldn't help laughing. "Just some customers."

"Well, they're basically the same thing." Madeline tapped her fingers against the counter. "Do you run a restaurant?"

"My brother does. He realised we didn't have time to make our own puff pastry and sent me out to buy some. I got shaken awake at seven in the morning."

"Too bad," Madeline said, not unkindly. "I get up at four every day. Working with Francis means a terrible sleep schedule."

Francis? "Is he…"

"My brother? Unfortunately. I heard him say you were new to town, I hope he doesn't scare you off. If he does, though, I hope you don't stay away from us. Not that we need the money, but it's always nice to be able to talk to someone about pastries and desserts and — " She jumped. "Oh! I forgot to get your puff pastry. I'll be back."

Once again left alone in the bakery, Vicente listened to Madeline and Francis talk while in the kitchen, exchanging phrases in what sounded like French. Madeline returned a few minutes later with five more packets of puff pastry, saying quickly, "Francis wants me back in the kitchen to wash dishes, since that's practically all he keeps me around for, so pay quickly." Vicente didn't miss the bitterness in her voice. He gave her the money and shoved the puff pastry into his bag.

"It was fun talking to you." Madeline counted the change, foot rapidly tapping against the wooden floor. "If I have time, I'll visit your brother's restaurant…" she looked up at him expectantly.

"My name's Vicente." He caught the coins she slid across the counter like tiny hockey pucks. "Uh, have fun washing the dishes."

She smiled shrewdly. "Might as well have fun if I'm forced to do it. I'll see you again."

And with that, she disappeared into the kitchen again. Hefting up the shopping bag and feeling robbed of a good conversation, Vicente left the _Boulangerie_.


	20. In Which Tarts Are Made

Ling was waiting for him at the bus stop, eyes glued to her phone. "What took you so long?" She asked, not looking up from the screen.

"The baker just got caught up in some stuff." Somehow "I started talking to the baker's sassy younger sister after they argued over pastries and I want to talk to her again" didn't seem like a valid excuse. Vicente showed her the bag. "But I got the pastry, and there's a bit of money left."

Her expression lit up. "Coffee?"

"Might as well." The bus rolled up. "Yao doesn't have to know."

Soon, they were huddled in the corner seat of a nearby cafe, drinking one of the place's amazing concoctions. Vicente had watched as his sister poured a terrifying amount of syrup and cream into her iced coffee, convinced that just that one drink could give her diabetes. She was nibbling on a sugar cube as they chatted; it was a miracle her teeth were still intact. "Did Francis tell you the full story of his life as a baker and a pastry chef, starting from when he was born in Nice?"

"...what?"

"He did that the first time I visited. I got the full details of how his younger siblings were born, the not-really scandal of his parents' divorce and remarrying, and their move from Nice to Quebec City to here. All in a prominent French accent, too." Ling took another sip of her iced coffee. "The man either has nothing to hide or he's got no filter. Anyway, I asked him what the cheapest pastry he had was and he gave me this really nice brioche bun. It still cost so much, though. As much as three plates of Yao's _char siu fan_."

A small bun that cost as much as three rice dishes? But again, Boulangerie Bonnefoy was in the city center, where everything was expensive. "Did you talk to Madeline?"

Ling furrowed her eyebrows. "Who?"

"Francis' sister," Vicente elaborated. "She has blonde hair she keeps in a braid, and she wears glasses."

"I know a dance teacher at the city hall who looks like that, but I've never seen someone like that at the bakery. Maybe she stays in the kitchen a lot." Ling reached for another sugar cube and bit into it with a loud _crunch_.

"She was pretty nice," he said. "She didn't tell me about her life story or the history of the Boulangerie like Francis did to you, at least."

Ling popped the remainder of the sugar cube into her mouth and drained her glass of iced coffee. "Maybe I'll see her the next time I go to the _Boulangerie_."

By the time they'd finished their drinks, it was almost ten in the morning and the heat was growing sweltering. Vicente and Ling managed to get back to _Wang's_ before the puff pastry thawed, and stowed it in the kitchen's refrigerator. Yao and Leon had dealt with the few customers they got in the morning well enough, and Yao flipped the sign at the door to read "_CLOSED_" for their quick lunch. He ran around the kitchen with plates of rice and leftover vegetables while talking a mile a minute. "You better have got the puff pastry, you were gone for three hours which is way too long, thank goodness we weren't too busy this morning or Jia Long would've died of stress — "

"Good," Leon said while shovelling a spoonful of rice into his mouth.

Yao lightly whacked him on the head. "None of your nihilistic humour!" He sat down and took a big gulp of tea. "It's boiling outside, and I wouldn't be surprised if the puff pastry _melted_ while you were out, and then _poof_, we can say goodbye to a good amount of our money."

"Oh my goodness, Brother, calm down." Ling waved her chopsticks at him. "We got the puff pastry back safe and sound. With how you talk about it, it sounds more like your firstborn child."

Vicente tried to turn his laugh into a cough.

The siblings finished their lunch quickly after that and Yao tossed the dishes into the dishwasher while wetting a towel to wipe the table clean. People would be arriving at the restaurant soon, and they had to get ready.

By the end of the day, as usual, Vicente's feet hurt from eight hours of walking around the small restaurant, and his arms were sore from carrying trays. Leon was complaining about how his back hurt, although that was probably more because he slouched all the time than his job as a waiter.

Thankfully, he got to take a shower first instead of Ling, who had the tendency of using up all the hot water. She was in the kitchen heating up more leftovers, while Yao was passed out on the sofa. By the time Vicente emerged from the shower, Leon ran past him to get in before anyone else, lamenting his aching back. Apparently working at the restaurant had made Leon age fifty years.

The day was over before he knew it, and as exhausted as he was, Vicente couldn't sleep. He'd be in the kitchen for the first time tomorrow, cooking alongside Yao. He'd get to see what other people thought of his desserts, and the very thought made his heart race.

…

Vicente woke up an hour earlier than Yao the next day to get ready, and headed to the restaurant to let the puff pastry defrost. The recipes for the egg tarts and buns were pinned to the wall in case he forgot, but as he'd spent most of the past week committing them to memory, he probably wouldn't need them.

By the time Yao arrived at the kitchen, tying his hair up into a ponytail, Vicente had already laid out all his ingredients and equipment, and just to be nice, some of his older brother's, too.

"We still have half an hour before we open," Yao said. "I'll go wipe the tables, and you can start making the filling for the egg tarts."

Soon, the restaurant opened. Only a few customers showed up so early in the morning, and out of them only one of them ordered an egg tart. By then, Vicente's first batch of egg tarts were ready, and he pulled the tray out in anticipation.

The tops of the egg tarts were supposed to be brown, and his tarts were a little too brown. In fact, some of them looked a little burnt. But there was no time to be disappointed, so Vicente eased the least burnt-looking tart out of its case, needles of pain pricking his fingertips, and placed it on a plate for Leon to whisk away.

He showed up a few seconds later, nodding appreciatively at the tart. "I hope not too many people order those," Leon remarked. "I want one."

Ling came by during the afternoon to watch him and Yao cook, and gave him a thumbs-up when she saw the tray of fluffy custard buns. "One of the people who ordered those buns gave a _really_ big tip, and she drew a smiley-face on the receipt. We could get famous because of these."

Vicente, who was helping Yao make a glass of milk tea, could only reply, "in our dreams, maybe."

But when the day was through and they got to eat some of the leftover sweets for desserts, Leon said the same thing. "Maybe this huge Instagram celeb will show up and make a video about them eating your desserts, and all their fans will show up and we'll get rich because of them." He ripped his custard bun in half. "If I were Internet-famous, I'd totally do that."

Yao reached for an egg tart. "As great as these are, there's no way someone famous would show up in the shady part of town and go here of all places. Why would they come to this dilapidated place run by a bunch of siblings struggling to afford rent?"

Leon threw a crumb at him. "When you describe us like that, it makes us sound terrible. We aren't _terrible_. At least we don't sell fast food."

"That can be our slogan," Ling joked. "'At least we don't sell fast food'. The bar's set pretty low, but it works."

"At least our drinks haven't started lawsuits," Leon said.

"Yet."

That made Vicente laugh. "If someone sues us for our milk tea, I'm blaming you." He was exhausted and he had blisters on all ten fingers, but he couldn't be happier. The stressful years of cooking while juggling schoolwork felt so far away, and a future of baking just because he wanted to seemed certain.


	21. Pastéis and Pavlovas

By the end of the week, the addition of desserts had almost doubled their earnings. When Sunday arrived, they'd almost saved up enough to buy a dining table so they wouldn't have to hunch over the countertops at Wang's when they had meals. Yao sent Vicente and Leon off to the city center again to get more puff pastry with orders to thank the bakers for putting up with them.

Leon seemed to disappear the moment he got off the bus, so Vicente went off to Boulangerie Bonnefoy alone. Like last week, there was nobody at the counter. The clear plastic cases were stocked with the same baked goods — pristine, perfect croissants, airy millefeuilles and fluffy brioche buns topped with pearl sugar were on the middle row. The shelf next to it held dainty boxes of macarons, palmiers, calissons and other treats he couldn't name. He resisted the urge to pick up one of the boxes and went to stand at the counter.

The kitchen door was slightly ajar, and out wafted the smell of raspberries and caramel, as well as a pair of voices. Francis and Madeline were talking inside in French, and for the first time Vicente thanked his French lessons from school as he understood Francis saying, "I don't get why you want to stay in here. You mess up nine out of every ten pastries you make because you're up on another planet while the food gets destroyed."

Slightly muffled by the sound of what sounded like an electric mixer, Madeline retorted back, "would you rather have me at the counter? Then your customers will complain that I talk too much or too little or too strangely, or that I say the wrong things. Tell Matthieu to do it, everybody loves him."

Feeling bad about eavesdropping on a private conversation, Vicente began inching back to the shelves of pastries, but not before he heard Francis say, "Matthieu pays attention to what he's making, unlike you. Come on, grow a spine and man the counter. Out!"

Vicente gasped as he heard the sound of something slamming — it sounded painfully similar to the sound of his parents slamming doors or placing things down none too gently after a fight. He tried to calm his racing heart and turned towards the counter, hiding his shaking hands behind his back.

Madeline stormed out, face contorted in anger so intense that Vicente instinctively backed away. Then she looked up, all while tearing off her hair net and tossing it onto the floor, and her expression softened a little. "Oh, it's you. Hello, er..." she looked down. "Oh, dear... is it Victor?"

"My name's Vicente," he corrected. "Hi again. Are - Are you all right?"

She fiddled absently with the ribbons sewn to her apron, eyes still glued to the counter. "I'm fine. I apologise if you heard the yelling just now. I was having a disagreement with Francis. Don't worry about it, it's nothing serious or anything." Madeline paused. "It doesn't really involve you, actually."

"Ah." Vicente desperately tried to change the subject, standing in front of the counter like an idiot for at least thirty seconds before saying, "what were you making? I smelled raspberries." His voice cracked.

Madeline raised her head, eyes a little brighter with excitement. "I was making a pavlova," she said. "One of Francis' customers had ordered one for her birthday, and he let me make it. It's a really nice tart made out of egg whites that's soft on the inside, unlike other meringues. We top it with whipped cream and some raspberries. It's named after the ballerina Anna Pavlova, who created the 'Dying Swan' role. She graduated from the Imperial Ballet School, see, and even trained under Erico Cecchetti. And she was the first ballerina to travel the world, too. It's rumoured that this dessert was created in honour of her visits to Australia and New Zealand."

Vicente didn't really know what half the words Madeline said meant, but she looked so excited, sounded so passionate that he felt engaged anyways. He noticed that she twisted the pink velvet ribbons hemming her apron as she spoke, almost stumbling over her words as she told him more about Pavlova and her performances, then elaborated about the dessert named after her.

"The pavlova has to cool down fully in the oven because it's so delicate," Madeline continued. "If it's even exposed to the smallest amount of humidity, it'll collapse. Recipes with meringues in it are always so finicky." She tugged at the ribbons on her apron again. "Anyway, are you here to buy puff pastry again?"

He nodded. "The same amount as last week."

She disappeared into the kitchen, and thankfully this time Vicente didn't hear another explosive exchange. "What are you making with these, by the way?" She asked when she returned.

"Portuguese-styled egg tarts. My brother's customers really liked them when I started making them last week."

"Do you mean pastéis de nata? Francis tried making them once, but he just couldn't get the custard right. They sound lovely, though."

Why someone skilled enough to make macarons and pavlovas would find something as simple as egg tarts impressive, Vicente had no idea. He picked up the packets of puff pastry and threw them into his bag, then checked his watch. Yao wanted him and Leon back at the restaurant in five minutes. "I have to go now."

"Oh." Madeline slid his change back to him. "Good luck with making your tarts."

"I'll bring some over next week," he promised.

...

Leon wasn't at the bus stop. Vicente checked inside the city hall, but he wasn't there, either. After fifteen minutes of peering inside stores all the way down the street, he finally found his little brother at the very back of a bookstore, nose-deep in a thick book.

"We have to go," he said after another minute of just watching Leon read.

He snapped the book shut loudly, earning a dirty look from some other shoppers. "Oh, okay. Just let me pay for this." Leon handed the book to Vicente, who nearly dropped it, and stuck a hand in his pocket to look for his purse.

Turning the book around, Vicente noticed the label at the corner that displayed its price. "Ka Long, this book costs more than what we make in a day."

"Oh." Leon bent down and picked up a tall stack of books, which he looked through until he pulled one out. "This one's the cheapest. I'm getting it, then we can go." He scurried around the store, placing the other books he took back in their places, then to the counter to pay.

The two of them then left the bookstore, Leon already reading his new book. It hadn't been cheap, either, but at least they could afford it. Vicente tapped it. "I'm guessing you don't want Yao to know about this."

He shrugged. "He's been telling me since I was in grade school to read fewer comics and more novels, so whatever." Then he went back to reading.

The bus rolled up a few minutes afterwards, and they returned to Wang's almost an hour after Yao told them to. This time, Ling gave them her own lecture, while Yao sat down at the countertop where he normally worked and laid his head down.

"A few people were asking why we couldn't serve our tarts, and I wasn't about to reply, 'well, sorry, my half-braincelled brothers are busy goofing off who-knows-where and hopefully they'll be back soon!'."

"Is 'half-braincelled' even a word?" Yao mumbled.

Ling swatted him with a stack of napkins. "Who cares! We let down so many customers this morning."

"But, like, nobody comes here during the morning." Leon was still reading, somehow already a quarter of the way through the book. "Not on a Sunday, at least."

She didn't have a rebuttal to that. Ling placed down dishes of leftovers for lunch, sitting down huffily before passing out chopsticks. "Well, we have fifteen minutes left to eat, so finish quickly. Hopefully we don't disappoint other people this afternoon."

The afternoon passed quickly. Vicente had already gotten used to the burns that came with being in the kitchen, so he barely felt anything when picking up the burning-hot tray to free the tarts. Yao worked across him, sometimes humming as he fried vegetables, heated up soup and steamed rice. Orders for desserts were still uncommon enough that he could help his brother with making drinks and arranging a few dishes; they made a pretty good team. Vicente wondered if his younger self, who kept bumping into Yao and had to reach over him for utensils while cooking as a child, would say if he saw him now.

Feedback for the things he made always came back positive. Tips were generous, and, according to Ling, compliments were paid on receipts. Once, at around five o'clock, Leon showed up to tell him that one customer had loved the custard buns he made.

Wang's doors finally closed at half-past nine in the evening. Vicente carried a tray of leftover egg tarts up to the apartment, looking proudly at his creations. Next Sunday, he'd wake up early to make a batch to take to Boulangerie Bonnefoy. They couldn't possibly be on par with the fancy desserts at the Boulangerie, but maybe one day, if he tried hard enough, they might be good enough to compete with those pastries that were fit for kings.


	22. In Which Tarts Are Eaten

On Sunday, Vicente woke up at six o'clock, trying to massage away a cramp in his shoulder, to make the tarts. Baking them was already second nature; making the custard filling and preparing the tart shells felt so familiar that he could probably do it in his sleep. By half-past six, half a dozen of the egg tarts were baking away in the oven.

Once they were done, Vicente put them into a plastic box and went off to the bus station alone. He was careful not to tilt the box even the slightest bit, lest the tarts tip over or the delicate pastry break. When he lived in Hong Kong, his father had once bought a big box of egg tarts for Yao's birthday, only for the box to be jostled around during the drive home. Yao had opened the box to see a mess of crumbled, broken tart shells, spilled custard filling and not an intact tart in sight.

He was determined not to let that happen.

All throughout the bus ride, he held the box steady and made sure that the rumbling of the bus didn't make the egg tarts move around. If Ling or Leon saw him putting so much effort into keeping the tarts unharmed, they'd probably joke that he was delivering them to the President or something. Thankfully, Vicente got off at the city hall with the egg tarts perfectly all right.

This time, Madeline was waiting for him at the counter. She waved, eyeing the box that he was holding carefully. "Good morning, Vicente."

"Morning." He set the box down on the counter, looking around at the bakery. A pavlova, which Madeline talked about so passionately last week, was on display, its crackly white surface drizzled with raspberry sauce and topped with fresh strawberries. Next to it was a beautiful _mille crêpe_, every thin, delicate crêpe sandwiching a layer of pale beige cream. Then he realised he was spacing out and looked back at Madeline.

"In case you're wondering, I made the pavlova." Madeline smiled. "Hopefully it won't sink, or that'll be quite a lot of ingredients wasted. And Francis made the _mille crêpe_."

"It looks amazing."

"He's the only one who can make crêpes successfully. Every time I try, they're not perfectly round or end up too thick." She smiled, just a little bit. "Francis always calls them Satan's pancakes, and that's one of the few things I agree with him on."

For a hasty dinner, Yao had once made an egg pancake and wrapped it with lots of cabbage, pork floss and sun choi. He'd called it _jian bing_, which apparently was a popular street food in Beijing. Vicente wondered if that counted as a sort of crêpe. "I've never tried crêpes before, but they look hard to make."

"Oh, they're a nightmare," Madeline lamented. "If you put too much batter onto the pan, they'll pretty much be pancakes, and if you put too little, they'll most likely rip or burn. Once, I burned a crêpe so badly that the entire thing turned black."

He couldn't help the snort that escaped him, but quickly stopped it from turning into laughs. "Sorry," Vicente said, trying to keep a straight face. The story was barely funny; why was he holding back laughter?

Madeline ignored his apology and turned towards the box of egg tarts. "So these are the tarts you make for your brother's restaurant?"

"Yeah." He took the cover off and let the still-lingering smell of butter and vanilla join the symphony of flavours already there inside the Boulangerie. "They're not much, especially compared to the stuff you make every day."

"Nonsense, they look amazing." She peered into the box, pushing her glasses up. "I'd have one here and now, but standing at a counter's no way to enjoy a nice tart." Madeline took off her apron and put it into a drawer behind the counter, then brushed stray patches of flour off the burgundy blouse she wore underneath. She stepped out from behind the counter while scooping up the box, and placed it onto one of the tables at the side of the Boulangerie.

She looked up a moment later, having already sat down at the table. "Are you going to stay standing?"

Cheeks prickling with heat, Vicente sat down at the chair across hers. "The tarts taste best when they're right out of the oven," he babbled awkwardly, "and at our restaurant we usually serve it with milk tea or some other iced drink. My sister likes having them with iced coffee."

"Too bad we don't have drinks here, then." Madeline pulled two pieces of tissues from the napkin holder and laid it out in front of the two of them. "But with how hot it gets here during the afternoon, a glass of iced tea would be lovely with this." She took out a tart and laid it on her piece of tissue.

He couldn't think of anything else to say and took his own tart. Madeline took a bite of hers, setting the tart down daintily as she chewed. "It's lovely," she said after a while. "Tastes even better than it looks. And the custard is simply perfect. The balance of puff pastry, custard and vanilla is just right; but you're right, it would be even nicer right out of the oven, with the pastry crackly and hot and a glass of something cold to wash it all down." She stopped herself suddenly and reached for another piece of tissue awkwardly.

"I'm glad you liked it." Vicente had no idea why he felt so proud, why all of the nice remarks about the tarts in the past two weeks combined didn't give him half as much joy as Madeline's words did now. He nearly knocked over the napkin holder somehow. "Uh, I make custard buns at the restaurant as well, maybe I could bring some over next week?"

Her eyes lit up. "Oh, that would be great. If the buns are anything like these tarts, I'm sure they'll be delicious." She put the cover back on the box of tarts. "I'll save the rest of these for my brothers. Neither has had breakfast yet, so I'm sure they'll finish these off quickly. I bet it'll be the best breakfast they've ever had." Madeline stood up, brushing stray flakes of puff pastry off her pants. "It was certainly mine."

"Thanks," was all Vicente could say. "Oh, and I have to buy some puff pastry. The same amount as usual." He was beginning to see why he'd gotten terrible marks in all his speaking assessments back at school.

"Right." Madeline put her apron back on and disappeared into the kitchen. She hurried out a few moments later with the packets of pastry, closing the kitchen door slowly. "Francis is being scarily nice today. I think he's just happy I manned the counter today without saying anything."

He took the packets, fingertips melting little holes into the frost, and stood up from the table. After paying, and saying "goodbye", he stepped out of Boulangerie Bonnefoy.

…

Yao was waiting for him at the restaurant with his hands on his hips in a valiant attempt to look intimidating. The moment the puff pastry was safely stored in Wang's freezer, he began berating Vicente in a horrifying mixture of English, Cantonese and Mandarin.

"Wang Ka Lun, I woke up this morning to find your bunk empty, with Ka Long and Ling having no idea of where you are, and you disappear for half the morning with no indication of where you went! I was _this_ — " he pinched his fingers together, leaving only a tiny gap — "close to calling the police because I thought you were lying dead in an alley. Do you know how terrifying it is to have your brother disappear on you first thing in the morning, _hah_? Next time you want to spontaneously disappear on us to go buy illegal things or deal with gangs or whatever you went to do just now, leave a note telling us you'll be back soon, _kě yǐ ma_?"

Leon and Ling were watching from the sinks, busy washing dishes. They both looked very entertained, given that they weren't the ones being told off for once. Vicente stared at Yao, who was bright red and looked like he was going to explode, and replied, "sorry for making you worried, I just went out to get puff pastry."

"Alone, at six in the morning, which took one and a half hours?" Yao demanded.

"Okay, maybe I got carried away a little. But I got the puff pastry. I didn't go join a gang or anything, I promise."

Ling tossed a dirty dishcloth towards the basket at the corner of the kitchen. "Did you talk to Madeline again?"

Yao narrowed his eyes. "Who's Madeline?"

"She works at Boulangerie Bonnefoy. She helps me get the pastry every week."

"And she's not secretly a serial killer?"

"Good question," Leon called. "Maybe we'll wake up one morning to find her stabbing Vicente in the chest."

"No, you won't." Vicente rolled his eyes. "Madeline isn't a criminal or anything, she's just Francis' sister. Am I done being interrogated yet?"

"For now." Yao pushed him towards the sinks. "To make up for scaring the life out of me, you're washing dishes for the rest of the morning. I'll handle the pastries."

Accepting his fate, Vicente picked up a dirty plate and began rinsing the food stains off, thinking of the custard buns he'd make next week.

Sunday felt an eternity away.


	23. A Degree's A Degree

Just as he did last week, Vicente rose early to make the custard buns. The dough he used for the buns was leftovers from the day before, and he placed the soft, fluffy bowl of dough into the refrigerator while he made the custard. It was pretty similar to the custard filling that he used for his egg tarts, but a little thicker. The rich smell of warm custard soon filled the kitchen, and he took the milk pan off the heat to chill in the fridge next to the dough.

Once the custard was solid enough for him to work with, he took the milk pan and the bowl of dough out of the fridge to make the buns. A tiny dollop of custard was rolled out and wrapped in a layer of the dough - not too thick, not too thin - and shaped into a ball. Then it was another twenty minutes of waiting before he could pop the buns into the steamer.

Forty-five minutes later, four freshly-steamed, piping-hot custard buns were wrapped up in rice paper and in a paper bag, and Vicente was packing his bag to leave for Boulangerie Bonnefoy. He left a note on the countertop lest Yao make good on his threat and call the police, stored the milk pan back in the supply cabinet and went off to the bus stop.

At the counter, Madeline was busy fiddling with the display case of cakes, placing hand-written labels in front of every cake. The pavlova was gone, as was the mille crêpe, and in its place were a few syrup-soaked babas au rhum, a canary-yellow lemon tart and a pound cake glistening with Royal icing. The labels were all written in elegant cursive, set down in front of each gleaming silver cake stand, and Madeline stood up after the last one was placed.

She jumped at the sight of Vicente, eyes widened slightly. There was a while of silence before she relaxed and began to untie her apron. He stepped back awkwardly, the custard buns pressing into his chest. "I-I'm sorry, did I startle you?"

"No." Madeline folded her apron and slipped a hand into her skirt pocket, saying, "it's all right, I'm fine. Are those the custard buns you make at your restaurant?"

"Yep, I made these just this morning." He laid the paper bag on the counter. "They're great even at room temperature or left over, but I thought you'd want to try some fresh ones."

Madeline reached out to poke the paper bag, making the paper rustle. "They're still warm." She messed around with the bag a bit more, then stepped away. "Wait here; I made something for you as well."

He took the bag of custard buns and placed it at the same table he and Madeline had sat at the week before and opened it up. The buns looked a little squashed, but luckily none of the filling was leaking out. He pulled two of them out and placed them on a pair of napkins.

From the kitchen, Madeline emerged. She was holding two plates, each one with a slice of pale-brown tart. It was dotted with florets of meringue, the outsides brown after being flambéd, and looked like a work of art compared to his plain custard buns. She left the counter area and set them down at the table, before running back to get a pair of forks.

Vicente watched her sit down, pull a napkin holding a custard bun towards herself. "Sorry to ruin the mood, but, uh, what if someone else shows up and sees you away from the counter?"

She tore the custard bun in half, somehow avoiding getting any of the custard filling over her fingers (Vicente still had nightmares over the time Yao somehow made a bun explode and splattered the custard over half the table). "It's seven in the morning, and it's a weekend. We won't get any other customers in here until at least eleven, so until then you'll be the only one in here." Madeline nudged the plate holding the tart slice towards him. "So don't worry about it. Nobody will interrupt our Sunday mornings."

The way Madeline talked about their Sunday mornings made it sound like it was some sort of routine, even though they'd only seen each other four times. Not that he was against it; it was nice having someone apart from his siblings to talk to once in a while. He took a bite of the tart, shocked at the rich chestnut flavour that came from the silky-smooth filling. The meringue was crispy and surprisingly sweet, with a tiny hint of smokiness.

Across the table, Madeline was watching as she nibbled at her custard bun. "Is it good?"

The tart was flawless. Vicente had only had chestnuts ones, years before, roasted ones his mother had bought for him and Yao at a stand in Hong Kong. He'd burned his fingers trying to open up the rock-hard shells and resorted to smashing it with his bag to get it to split open. But somehow the chestnuts in Madeline's tarts had an entirely different flavour, mildly sweet and creamy; it was heavenly when paired with the meringue and the buttery, flaky crust.

But making a small speech on the perfection of someone's baked good was weird, so he settled on replying, "it's really good. How's the bun?"

"It's amazing." She took another bite, closing her eyes in elation. "I thought the egg tarts you brought last week were good, but these are even better. If you weren't already working at another restaurant, I bet Francis would be dying to hire you."

"Are they really that good?"

"I said what I said. The buns aren't like anything you'll see us make." Madeline pressed on the white exterior of the custard bun, watching the tiny dip rise up slowly. "I'd ask for the recipe, but I suppose that's a secret only your restaurant can know about."

Vicente chipped off another piece of the tart. "Not really. I could bring the recipe over another day, maybe next week." The recipe was still written on a yellowed piece of paper in his mother's handwriting, and he didn't really want to part with it. "Or maybe I could send it to you after translating it - "

"Translating it?"

"It's in Chinese," he explained. "I could send you an English version of it over email or something."

Madeline pulled a pen out of her apron pocket and a piece of tissue out of the napkin holder and began to write on it. "This is my phone number," she said. "you can send the recipe here, and I'll send the one for the chestnut tart." She looked down at her own slice, untouched. "Francis insists that the flavour is too boring and that the meringues are unreliable, and the tart shell is boring, so I'm glad you like it."

He took the piece of tissue and took a look at the number, then pulled out his phone to copy it into his contacts. While he turned off his phone, he noticed the date - it was nearly September, when his first semester at the local university was to start. "School's starting in a week," he said aloud.

"Hmm?" Madeline glanced at him, confused. "Do you mean Trofilos U. or...?"

"Yes, that." Vicente put his phone back into his pocket. "I mean, I have my textbooks and all that, but I honestly have no idea what I'm getting into." During June, he'd picked a subject at random, making sure it sounded like something his stepmother would approve of. In hindsight, that was a really stupid idea.

"What are you taking?"

"Hospitality management." At least it might ensure that he knew how to run Wang's if Yao fell sick for some reason.

"I'm taking that, too. I originally wanted to take history of dance, but that's not very useful, does it?" She sounded bitter. "But I guess a degree is a degree."

"As long as I don't flunk out midway, I'll be all right," he agreed. "Anyway, I should get going now, I don't want my brother to worry."

Madeline stood up. "Do you need any puff pastry?"

"Oh, right." After sharing their food and talking for so long, he'd completely forgotten about why he had to be here in the first place. "Sorry about that."

"Don't worry, everyone forgets things sometimes." Madeline went behind the counter again and into the kitchen, returning just a minute later with the usual packages of pastry. "Francis is really happy that I agreed to man the counter. I don't think he knows it's because I like waiting for you every Sunday, but I suppose he can stay in the dark." She accepted the money and dropped it neatly into the cashier. "Thank you for the buns, by the way."

"Any time." Vicente blinked hard; waking up so early had taken its toll. "I'll see you in school, it'll be nice to have a friend around."

"I'll see you there," she echoed.

The taste of chestnut still fresh in his memory, as well as buzzing thoughts about his friend and classmate, Vicente left the Boulangerie and made his way home.


	24. Coffee At The Cove

**Madeline**   
_Should we meet up by the school gates? (Sent 07:45)_

His phone chimed. Vicente picked up his phone and scrolled through Madeline's latest message while pushing a tray full of custard buns into the oven. The first batch would probably get the restaurant through the morning, and Yao could make the rest until he got home. His phone chimed again. The next message read:

_In around twenty minutes maybe (Sent 07:45)_   
_Francis needs help cleaning the kitchen (Sent 07:45)_

An indignant shout from behind him nearly made him drop his phone. Yao marched up to the oven and slammed the door shut, turning dials while speaking so quickly Vicente could barely make out the words. "Oh my goodness, don't look at your phone while putting things in the oven _lah_. What if the temperature is too hot or the buns are tipping over and you don't notice because you're texting this Madeline girl?"

"He's talking to Madeline?" Ling popped her head into the kitchen. She was desperately trying to tame her rat's nest hair and was still in her yellow pyjamas.

"Yes. I mean no." He put on an oven mitt and went to take out the batch of egg tarts he'd popped in a few minutes ago. "I mean, how did you know?"

"Well, firstly, I saw her name on your screen." Yao said, his voice becoming muffled as he leaned into the freezer and rifled through packs of food. He popped out victoriously a few moments later holding a packet of pork belly. "And secondly, apart from our contacts, hers is the only one you have."

Another egg tart was placed on the cooling rack, and another on a plate for a customer outside. "I could've been talking to Kiku."

Leon popped up at the kitchen window to fetch the plate and a tall glass of iced milk tea. "But you don't smile at your phone when texting Kiku," he remarked, "you only do that when you're texting Madeline."

"I smile?"

"I know, it's really creepy," Ling said.

"He kind of looks like he's planning a murder."

Vicente ignored his younger brother and turned on his phone again, typing his reply.

_I'll be there, I'm about to leave home (Sent 07:48)_

His bag was placed behind the cashier, and he slung it over a shoulder as he left. "Good luck," Yao called from the kitchen.

Ten minutes later, the bus rolled up in front of Trofilos University. A bunch of people were gathered around the entrance — a few parents saying goodbye to their kids, some old friends reunited after the summer and nervous-looking freshmen among them. Vicente shuffled through the crowd, shoulder already hurting from his textbook-filled bag.

Madeline was standing next to a clump of bushes, her bag clutched to her chest. She looked nervous, her eyes darting around the rest of the entrance tentatively and poised to run. Relief flooded her expression as Vicente approached.

Her expression was still a little wary. He waved half-heartedly, adjusting his glasses. "Hello?" He tried.

"You're early," Madeline commented. She pulled out a pair of earplugs from her ears and slipped them into her pocket, taking a deep breath. "I thought I'd have to wait for at least ten more minutes."

"Well, I'm here now. Should we, uh, go inside?"

She nodded, keeping close to the walls as they waded through the sea of people towards the main building. The door was wide open, revealing a vast foyer where a few students were milling around. The walls were painted vividly with images of forests and meadows, the light pale blue from the stained-glass skylight. The two of them followed the hand-painted directions on the walls up winding glass stairs, past still-empty classrooms until they reached room 204, where their first class was to be held.

They were the only ones in the room. Vicente slung his bag off his shoulder, walking towards a desk towards the back of the room. Madeline chose a desk at the corner, placing her bag down tentatively as though she expected it to explode.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Vicente's phone chimed. He picked it up, wondering if it was Yao wanting to check on him before realising the message was from Madeline.

_Why isn't she just talking to me?_ He wondered. _We're literally in the same room._ But he turned on his phone and read the message anyways:

_Do you want to have some coffee after classes are over? (Sent 08:23)_

He peeked at Madeline and found her typing away, bag on her lap. A plain beige notebook was placed on the desk, and she ran her fingers over the cover idly. Vicente looked away and replied:

_Sure (Sent 08:23)_   
_There's a cafe near the city hall (Sent 08:23)_   
_Should we go there? (Sent 08:24)_

The answer came in seconds.

_Oh! You mean The Cove (Sent 08:24)_   
_Okay, it's a nice place (Sent 08:24)_

The door swung open and a few more students showed up. He noticed Madeline switch off her phone and put it into her pocket, expression turning guarded again.

Part of him wanted to ask her if she was all right, but a sudden whoop made him drop his phone with a clatter, and he jumped. Maybe he'd ask her at the cafe, provided he was still alive by then.

...

Seven hours later, his notebook partially-filled with notes on marking schemes, syllabi and reading recommendations, Vicente followed Madeline into _The Cove_. It was right across the road from _Boulangerie Bonnefoy_, shaded by neat, pastel blue-and-white awnings. Even from the outside, he could hear the blare of trumpets from the wartime tunes playing inside.

Madeline pushed the door open and waved at a waiter, who led them through the dimly-lit cafe, seating them at a table next to a bookshelf bulging with books. Once the waiter had left, she turned towards Vicente and asked, "do you want anything special? The peppermint tea is excellent. I've heard someone call it 'boiled toothpaste', but they serve it with cookies here and that really brings out the flavour. The owner isn't very good at cooking or baking, apparently, and the only thing he's trusted to make are cookies."

"Uh," he said, very intelligently. "Not really, I think I'll just get some hot coffee."

She called a waiter over and placed their order. As the waiter walked away, Madeline fiddled with the satin ribbon on her braid, asking, "you've been here before?"

"My sister and I came here once."

She looked surprised. "You have a sister?"

"A younger sister, a younger brother, an older brother and an older stepbrother who doesn't live with us," Vicente said. "Our apartment can get cramped sometimes."

The waiter returned with their coffee. Madeline pulled a cup towards herself and took a sip from it, the steam clouding her glasses. "You have lots of siblings," she commented. "I only have two brothers. You already know Francis, and there's also my twin brother Matthieu."

"Are they annoying? My younger siblings can be total demons, especially first thing in the morning." He remembered something. "Leon, my younger brother, once almost pulled a sleeve off my shirt."

"Matthieu is fine." Madeline took another sip of her coffee. "At least, I've learned to like him after eighteen years of sharing a room with him. And Francis always means well in everything he does, it's just that he does everything wrong." She sighed into her cup. "Anyway, how are your older siblings?"

"Yao is probably the best older brother someone could ask for, even if he's fussy and overprotective sometimes. My stepbrother Kiku was really quiet when he first started living with us, but he's warmed up since then."

"I'd like to meet them one day," Madeline said. She pushed the other cup of coffee towards Vicente, as well as the pitcher of cream the waiter had set down. "Come on, drink before it gets cold."

He stirred a bit of cream into the cup and dropped in a sugar cube before sliding the pitcher across the table again. "Do you want any?"

Madeline shook her head, swirling around the last few drops of her black coffee. "When you work in a bakery, sometimes you get tired of having sweet things."

They finished the rest of their coffee in silence, gathered their bags and went out to the register to pay. Vicente got his purse out before Madeline, paying for their drinks before she could protest. "I could've covered that," she insisted, "you already spend so much money at the _Boulangerie_."

Outside, they made arrangements to meet again next morning, at the same time and place. Then Madeline bade him goodbye and crossed the road to Boulangerie Bonnefoy, while he made his way to the bus stop.

To his surprise, Leon was waiting for the bus there, too. He looked up as Vicente neared, asking, "so how was your date?"

"My what?"

"Your date," Leon repeated. "When you and Madeline were in _The Cove_ like five minutes ago, probably having profound, romantic conversations over coffee."

"It wasn't a date, we just decided to have some coffee after class. There wasn't anything romantic about it." He wiped off his glasses, looking at his younger brother incredulously. "Anyway, how did you know I was at _The Cove_?"

Leon snorted, kicking him in the shin. "Because I was there. I was literally a few tables away, having a cup of hot chocolate, and you were too busy talking to notice me."

"Oh."

"But anyways, how was it? Maybe a few dates later you two are going to get real close and make babies and I'll get to be an uncle. Can you imagine being an uncle at sixteen?"

"No! I'm not going to... to..." Vicente's face felt hot. "You know. No. You're not going to be an uncle."

The bus pulled up at the station.

"Yeah, yeah, sure." Leon kicked him again and jumped on the bus. "Now come on, let's go home."


	25. Mistakes

The first week of university passed by in a blur. Every day of classes was a whirlwind of note-taking and questions, jotting down deadlines and drafting essays. The only calm part of the day was the half-hour he and Madeline spent in various cafes around the city, before he returned to Wang's to cook until it was nearly ten at night.

Yao decided to add steamed red date pudding to the menu, and the sticky-sweet layered dessert quickly became just as popular as the egg tarts and custard buns. Wang's still wasn't as busy or well-known as the restaurants in the city center, but they already had a few regular customers who ordered the same things every visit.

One afternoon, Madeline wasn't at the school gates after class. She wasn't at the bus stop, either, nor was she at _The Cove_. Vicente crossed the street from the cafe to the _Boulangerie_ and opened the door. He was greeted, as usual, with the smell of butter and cinnamon.

Nobody was at the counter. On display in the case beneath it was a pure-white chiffon cake, topped with shredded coconut and powdered sugar like snow, and next to it stood a bold orange cake covered in fondant maple leaves. There was another _mille crêpe_, too, its glossy amber glaze glinting in the light.

"Er, excuse me?"

He looked up. A boy was standing at the counter. There was a smudge of flour on his round glasses, and his apron was half-covered in streaks of bread dough. He looked at Vicente, continuing softly, "may I help you?"

The boy looked like a male version of Madeline; he had to be her twin brother. "Matthieu?"

Bright blue eyes widened; Matthieu asked, "how do you know my name?"

"I'm friends with Madeline, she told me about you."

"Ah, then you must be Vicente." Matthieu relaxed. "Madeline talks about you a lot."

"I hope she doesn't say anything bad."

"Nothing terrible. She says you're a great baker, even better than our older brother, and she's been happier since the two of you became friends." He brushed his hands clean, taking off his apron and folding it. "If you're looking for her, by the way, she's gone out. You can wait until she's back."

While Vicente sat down at one of the tables, a few more customers arrived at the _Boulangerie_. Some of them bought delicate boxes of _croquant_ cookies, some left with a long _ficelle_ loaf. Matthieu was manning the counter and smiled at the customers; a few regulars showered him with compliments and questions about his daily life.

Madeline arrived twenty minutes after Vicente showed up, sweeping through the door holding a number of bags. Her honey-blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun, making her features look so piercing they could cut through steel. The dark-plum strap of a leotard seemed to be poking out from under her shirt. "I'll take over, Matthieu," she said, "just let me get changed."

Matthieu nodded absently while flipping through a notebook. "Do it quickly. You don't want to keep your friend here waiting."

She glanced briefly at Vicente, who waved stiffly, and set down one of her bags behind the counter. Then she left the _Boulangerie again_, her bun bobbing behind her.

"Our apartment is right above here," Matthieu said, as though he'd read his mind. He busied himself with tidying the counter, wiping it clean of breadcrumbs, and stepped out from behind the counter to push in one of the chairs. "Knowing Madeline, she'll come back down in over half an hour after drifting off, so you can leave if she takes too long."

Vicente tapped his fingers against the cold surface of the table. "I don't mind waiting."

It turned out Matthieu was right — Madeline only returned to the _Boulangerie_ thirty minutes later, her hair back in its regular braid and her dark-red cardigan neatly buttoned. There was a spring in her step now, clearly something had happened while she was away that had lifted her spirits. She shooed Matthieu back into the kitchen and settled down at the counter, humming a tune.

"Where did you go?"

She looked up. "Pardon?"

"Where did you go after classes?" Vicente repeated. "You weren't at the school gates, and I couldn't find you at _The Cove_." Madeline's taken-aback expression nearly made him flinch. "Y-You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"No, no, it's all right. I wasn't doing anything serious." She twisted one of the buttons on her cardigan. "I was at the city hall holding dance lessons."

"You dance?"

"I don't have a teaching licence, so I don't get paid for it," Madeline said. "Really, the city hall only keeps me around because there isn't anyone else here who wants to teach." Her fingertips turned white as she twisted the button harder. "I don't dance professionally, though. I could be, and I wanted to, but I don't."

"Why — "

"It's none of your business," she snapped.

"Oh." Vicente's voice came out quieter than before. "I'm sorry."

Apart from the jazz music playing in the background, everything was silent. Then Madeline spoke up, pulling uncomfortably on her cardigan sleeves. "I have to go in to help Francis with the dishes," she said tonelessly.

"I have to go too." Vicente stood up, avoiding her gaze. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Bye."

Guilt gnawing away at his heart, he pushed through the _Boulangerie's_ door and walked towards the bus station.

…

"You IDIOT!"

It turned out that Ling had surprisingly good aim when she was annoyed. Vicente dodged another stuffed animal and ducked before a pencilcase (printed with the logo of Ling's favourite band) could knock him out.

Apparently, Leon had noticed him sulking around the kitchen, moping so badly that his concentration had paid the price. Thankfully, Yao managed to keep him from pouring half a glass of soda onto his shoes, and had interrogated him after work until he told them what happened.

Then Ling decided to lay waste to her and Yao's room as punishment for his stupidity.

"Her tone made it very clear that she didn't want to talk about it, but oh no, you had to touch on a subject that was super sensitive! Have you no shame, Brother? Have you no _common sense_?" She bounced a pastel-orange stress ball off his chest. "That's not how you talk to girls!"

"What does talking to girls have to do with this?"

Ling threw a frilly white headband at him next. "Okay, let me rephrase my statement. That's not how you talk to my future sister-in-law! I want to be the flower girl at your wedding, and I'm not letting your inability to differentiate between subjects that should and shouldn't be talked about stop that!"

"I didn't know you knew that many words," Leon crabbed.

The next headband hit Leon squarely in the face.

Vicente closed his eyes. "Why are all of you assuming that Madeline and I are going to be an item?"

"Because you're totally smitten with her." Ling stopped throwing for a moment to check her nails. "You're texting her all the time, you go to school together and have hot dates after classes nearly every day, and on Sunday you wake up early so you can talk to her some more! I'm surprised I'm not an aunt yet."

"I'm not smitten with her, we've known each other for literally a month."

Leon crossed his arms, unimpressed. "Love is immune to the boundaries of time and space."

"So deep," Ling said sarcastically.

Yao, who'd been lying facedown in bed for the past few minutes, suddenly lurched up. He stared at the mess for a moment, then at Vicente. "Jia Lin _ah_, even if you're not intensely attracted to Madeline, you shouldn't have pressed her for an explanation. Like Yue Ling said, it was clearly a touchy subject."

"I think she was being unfair, though," Leon piped up. "I mean, how was Vic to know that she didn't want to talk about it?"

"He said so himself that she sounded guarded. That alone should have tipped him off that he shouldn't press further." Yao got up from bed to swat Vicente's arm. "But you did, _sei chun_, and you just mumbled an apology and left!"

"Exactly." Ling threw a T-shirt at him. "Go text her an apology now, and make sure it's sincere. Then tomorrow morning you two can kiss and make up."

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned it on, clicking into Madeline's contact. "We're not going to kiss."

"For now."

"Shush." Vicente typed his answer and sent it.

_I'm sorry for making you upset this afternoon. I crossed some of your boundaries, and I won't make that mistake again. (Sent 21:34)_

"She's typing, she's typing!" Ling said excitedly.

**Madeline**   
_No, I'm sorry for losing my temper at you. That was uncalled for. (Sent 21:34)_

Fully aware that his siblings were watching behind his back, Vicente replied.

_It's fine. I just hope I didn't go too far. (Sent 21:35)_

**Madeline**   
_Of course not, I just overreacted. (Sent 21:36)_   
_Should we meet up at our usual spot? (Sent 21:36)_

Behind him, Leon was snickering and making kissy faces. He yelped as a teddy bear was kicked at his stomach.

_I'll see you there (Sent 21:36)_

**Madeline**   
_I have to go now (Sent 21:36)_   
_I'll see you tomorrow morning (Sent 21:37)_   
_Bye! (Sent 21:37)_

With that, she went offline.

Vicente turned around to face his siblings. "There we go, problem solved. No kissing had to be involved."

Leon stretched, cracking the bones in his neck as he said, "well done. I thought for a moment she'd call just to yell at you and we'd have to listen."

He ignored his younger brother and left for his own bedroom, hoping to finish part of an essay and go to sleep early. It'd been a long day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sei chun (死蠢): Cantonese slang for "idiot".


	26. Eyes Like The Sky

The next morning, at exactly five minutes past eight, Vicente found Madeline at her usual spot by the bushes. She was fidgeting, running her fingers over a small length of ribbon and bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, but slowed down a little as he approached. "Good morning."

"Morning," he returned. The incident from the day before still nagged at the back of his mind. "I-I'm sorry, again, for what happened yesterday."

"You apologise a lot," Madeline observed. There was no malice in her tone; it was like she was just stating the truth. "You don't have to, you know, there isn't anything to be sorry for."

"I guess old habits die hard." If he had a dollar every time he'd apologised to his parents for something completely unnecessary, he'd have enough money to buy himself a house.

"Not everything is your fault," she continued matter-of-factly. "Don't take responsibility for things out of your control."

"But I did have control of what I was trying to say and I shouldn't have — "

"It's fine. It really is. Just don't dwell on it, all right?" Madeline put her ribbon into her pocket and began walking towards the school building. "Now come on, let's go."

They stepped inside the building, where a few other students were lounging around and drinking coffees. As they walked to the lecture hall, Vicente asked, "should we go to _The Cove_ after classes today?"

"Mmhmm." Madeline pushed the door of the lecture hall open and stepped inside. "I only have to teach at the city hall every Monday and Thursday, so I can spend all the other afternoons with you."

They took their seats towards the back of the hall and pulled out their notebooks, the air silent save for the sound of flipping paper. The door creaked open not long after that, welcoming a few more students.

Vicente peeked next to him, where Madeline was flipping through her textbook. In the dim light of the lecture hall, her blue eyes looked even brighter, like tiny, shimmering sapphires. She pursed her lips as she highlighted a point in a paragraph, so tense with concentration that she resembled a hunter tracking down their prey. It had to be a special skill, how she managed to make something as boring as skimming through a textbook look so beautiful.

Loud, heavy footsteps sounded at the front of the hall, and their professor cleared her throat. Vicente jolted, realising he'd been staring at Madeline, and flushed. He busied himself with writing in his notebook and prayed that she hadn't noticed.

…

As per Leon's recommendation, Vicente ordered a mug of hot chocolate at _The Cove_. A toasted marshmallow bobbed up and down in the rich, sweet drink and was slowly melting. Across the table, Madeline was pouring herself a cup of red tea, the steam rising up from her cup fogging her glasses. The chef, who apparently knew her well, had left her a handmade doily on the saucer.

Madeline set down the porcelain teapot gently and picked up her saucer, looking right at Vicente. Her gaze seemed to pierce right through him. Those sky-blue eyes could change so quickly, from being bright with joy to stormy with rage, or, as they were now, sharp and cutting.

The words that left her mouth, though, were a far cry from her gaze. "Tell me more about you."

He nearly dropped his mug. "Huh?"

"I want to know you." Madeline lifted the teacup to her lips and drank from it, closing her eyes briefly. "We've been friends for a month now, and I still don't know much about you. I know that your brother owns a restaurant somewhere here, you're the middle child in your family and you're an amazing baker, but that's all."

Vicente took a sip of the hot chocolate before asking, "what do you want to know?"

"Anything." That look was back, brilliant and discerning. "Where are you from? What's your favourite colour? What languages do you know other than English?"

"Well…" he took another sip. "I'll start with the first question, since it's a long story. I was born in Macau, but my family moved to Hong Kong when I was two years old. My younger brother Leon was born there. A year after that, we moved again to Taipei, where Yuet Ling, my little sister, was born. Then, when I was nine years old, we left Taipei and arrived at Arlingdale."

Taking another drink from her teacup, Madeline said, "that's close by, right?"

"An hour or so away, I think." Vicente warmed his hands with the heated mug. "We lived there for nine more years until my oldest brother Yao graduated from university. He left home to start his restaurant here, and we all decided to follow him."

"I see."

"How about you?" He asked.

She fiddled with the doily on her saucer, running slender fingers over the crocheted flowers. "We were born in Nice, France," she said. "After my parents got a divorce, my mother moved to Quebec City in Canada. Francis got his cooking and pastry diplomas in Ottawa and decided to move away to Trofilos to start his own bakery. After Matthieu and I graduated high school, our parents encouraged us to follow him, work at the _Boulangerie_ for a while before attending the local university." Madeline reached for the teapot again. "Last week, you told me you had a stepbrother. Were your parents divorced, too?"

Slightly taken aback, Vicente nodded. "Kiku and his mother moved in when I was twelve. He was all right, we still text every day. But his mother…" it all came flooding back — the insults, the shouting, the sound of a hand striking against a face. None of it had happened to him, but being spared while forced to watch his siblings suffer had been a million times worse. He struggled to keep the memories at bay. "Kiku's mother is the reason why we left."

"Oh," she said, somewhat flatly. "My parents' divorce didn't affect us that much, so I'm lucky. My father visited us every two weeks, and I get along with my stepfather. In fact, I'm probably closer to him than I am to Francis."

He recalled the few spats he head Madeline and Francis have in the _Boulangerie's_ kitchen, where Francis claimed his sister was incompetent or worse than Matthieu, or kicked her out of the kitchen altogether. "I'm sorry. It must be terrible to have siblings who aren't nice to you, especially since you work with him."

"He isn't unkind." Madeline twisted the doily. "No, Francis has always been overprotective of me. Even when I was young, he'd follow me around as I played because he was worried I'd get hurt." She twisted the doily harder, tugging at one of the stitches. "That's exactly the problem. He was protective to the point of being controlling; he stopped me from doing lots of things because he thought I'd get hurt. Not even my parents were so watchful of me. But it never really got to me until several years ago, when Francis… well, he…"

"You don't have to tell me," Vicente said quickly.

She sighed. "I'd rather not keep it bottled up inside me." Madeline stared into her tea, as though it could provide her with some consolation. "And I trust that you won't tell anyone, will you?"

"I won't tell a soul."

"All right, then. You remember yesterday, when I told you I could be dancing professionally?" She clenched her fists, glowering at her teacup. "It's Francis' fault I'm not." Another sigh. "Ever since I was seven, I'd trained at the top schools in the countries. I was good at it, I loved it. I started dancing in France, and I continued doing so in Canada; it was one of the only things that stayed the same after moving.

"But for some reason, Francis got the idea that dancing wasn't good for me. I guess he thought all the things I'd have to focus on, turnout and extensions and all that, would be too much for me to handle, or being on stage with music constantly playing would make me shut down." Madeline's voice wavered slightly. "He was wrong — being in the studio was one of the only times I wasn't overwhelmed. But he didn't listen when I told him that. He never listened.

"When I was sixteen, Francis went to my coaches himself. I don't know what he told them, but it was enough to convince them that I wasn't to train again. No matter what I said, I couldn't talk my way back into training again." Her voice grew quiet; her eyes darkened. "My coaches believed him over me, their own student. After I left that dance school, Francis stopped me from dancing."

Vicente reached hesitantly across the table, his hand stopping a few centimeters away from her clenched fist. "T-That's awful," he said softly. "Francis had no right to keep you from dancing."

Madeline's knuckles were white as she squeezed tighter, continuing, "I tried teaching myself how to dance after that, and I've managed for two years. Of course, I jumped at the chance to hold lessons at the city hall if it meant I could dance at an actual studio again. I'll never be on stage as a principal dancer like I dreamed, but I guess this is close enough." A tear slipped down her cheek.

He couldn't help closing the distance between them, covering her hand with his own and keeping it there until she relaxed, reaching her other hand up to wipe her eyes. "Thank you for listening," she whispered. "I've never told anyone about what happened between Francis and I."

They stayed like that for a peaceful, comforting moment, hands overlapping in the middle of the table while their drinks cooled beside them. Then Madeline spoke up. "I suppose that's the problem with Francis. He's like a helicopter, always hovering around me and trying to keep me out of harm, but he just causes more problems. I don't know why, but I thought you'd understand the feeling."

"My parents, especially my stepmother, never gave me the light of day." Vicente surprised himself by speaking. "Maybe they thought that because my grades weren't as high as Yao's or as low as Leon's, there wasn't any need to help me. Or maybe they just forgot about me." He tapped a finger absently against Madeline's wrist. "We barely talked. They were barely home, and for a long time Yao and I had to cook dinner for the family. They gave me a lot of freedom, sure, but it was more because they didn't want to bother with me."

"But you're away from them now, right? You've found people who care."

"Of course. There are my siblings, my stepbrother." He smiled slightly. "There's you."

She smiled, too, sweet and genuine. It wasn't the smile he saw on her when she was talking to customers at the _Boulangerie_, the strained one that didn't quite reach her eyes. It was real, one that seemed to stop time itself with its joy and relief. If only he could draw — then he'd be able to document that smile for eternity.

The loud buzzing of his phone snapped him out of his daydream. Vicente pulled his phone out of his bag and turned it on. The screen displayed the words **82 MISSED CALLS**. Half of them were from Yao and the other half from Leon and Ling.

_Oh, no._

"Your siblings?" Madeline asked.

He turned his phone off again. "Who else? I think they'll show up here any minute to tear me apart or something."

"We should get going," she agreed. "I want to get some stretching done before going back to the Boulangerie." Madeline finished off her tea and stood up, fixing the ribbon in her hair. "You can go catch the bus. I'll pay this time."

Reluctantly standing up, Vicente placed his purse back in his pocket and pushed his chair in. "See you tomorrow."

"See you." Madeline went to the cashier, counting coins in her wallet. "And thank you again, for listening."

"Any time." He pushed the door open and stepped out into the cool evening.


	27. Dates and Pudding

"Bring her over!"

Struggling to keep his patience as he shoved a pan of red date pudding into the oven, Vicente asked for what was probably the hundredth time, "but why?"

Yao's voice was muffled slightly over the sound of sizzling as he tossed bean sprouts and hard tofu in a wok. "You never stop talking about her. You're always 'Madeline this' and 'Madeline that' and I want to see her so I can see what's so good about her!"

"Plus — " Ling popped her head into the window from outside the kitchen — "you missed over eighty of our calls during that hot date with her the other day. I want to know you ignore your dear siblings in favour of her."

Vicente opened the cover of their second steamer, fanning away the cloud of steam that emerged to pick up the tray of custard buns. "It wasn't a date. We don't go on dates."

"You go for coffee nearly every day to talk!" Ling said, "and I'm ninety-nine percent sure you two don't talk about school stuff."

"They probably talk about how to be quiet and boring." Leon joined his sister at the window and grabbed a steaming plate of shredded chicken to take outside. "Like, every afternoon they ask each other, 'hey, how do I be as boring and emo as possible?' and that goes on for an entire hour."

"I'm not emo." He mixed half a glass of coffee into a glass of iced milk tea and placed it in front of the plate Leon was holding.

Leon picked up the glass of _yuen yeung_ with his other hand and shrugged, then left to deliver the food.

"Come on, Jia Lin, bring her over tomorrow afternoon." Yao began beating an egg with a pair of chopsticks, shouting over the noise of steel striking against steel. "I'll make you two something and you can have your deep conversations here."

He pulled out the pan of red date pudding and grabbed a butter knife to ease the sticky red-and-white treats out of their molds. The smell of red dates and coconut milk filled the air. "Madeline and I don't have deep conversations, Brother. We just talk about baking or school."

"You talk about baking your school?" Leon had reappeared at the window. "How would you even find an oven big enough to fit the entire campus in it?"

"'Baking or school', Ka Long, not 'baking our school'." Vicente popped the last of the red date puddings out of the mold and tossed the pan into the nearby sink. "We're just friends who talk about random things, I don't know why you're so worked up about it."

"Bring her over anyways," Yao said. "She's the only friend you have here and I'd like to meet her."

"But she lives in the city centre, what if she doesn't want to come to this part of Trofilos?"

"_Aiyah_, stop making excuses." He slammed the wok down on the stove with a mighty CLANG. "If she's really your friend she won't care about where you live. Invite her here, have some tea with her and if she doesn't like it you can just go back to that stuffy coffee shop near the city hall. Okay?"

With a sigh, Vicente began to neatly arrange the red date puddings on a plate and said in defeat, "okay, fine. I'll ask her. But if she says no, we're going to The Cove like we always do."

Once the day was over and the siblings had returned to their apartment, Vicente took his phone out to text Madeline.

_Do you want to go to my brother's restaurant after classes tomorrow? (Sent 21:31)_   
_My siblings want to meet you, for some reason (Sent 21:31)_

A few minutes later, her reply arrived.

**Madeline**   
_Sure (Sent 21:33)___

_ _Well then. Vicente switched his phone off again and mentally prepared for the chaos that would inevitably occur tomorrow._ _

_ _…_ _

_ _As the bus rattled away from the university, the two of them sat in silence. Madeline was looking out the window, where the city was passing by in a blur, and hummed. Next to her, Vicente tried to look busy as he texted Yao._ _

_ _Madeline spoke up after they got off the bus. "What's the restaurant's name?"_ _

_ _"_Wang's_. In Cantonese, it's _Wong Kee_." He stepped on a dead leaf, hearing the satisfying crunch. "We've only been open for around a month." The familiar painted sign emerged in his view and he stopped in front of the glass door of the restaurant. "Here we are."_ _

_ _The first one who noticed their arrival was Ling, who was buttoning up a pastel flannel jacket over her shirt at the cashier. Surprisingly, she didn't jump out immediately and start planning their wedding; on the contrary she stepped back, one hand still on the hem of her jacket. "Oh," she said faintly._ _

_ _"Yue Ling, are you all right?"_ _

_ _His sister was wide-eyed, staring at the ground as she hastily returned to the counter. "You're the girl who holds ballet classes at the city hall, right?" Ling pulled the register open and started counting banknotes, still talking rapidly. "Or maybe you're not, I don't know, anyways hi."_ _

_ _Next to Vicente, Madeline looked just as surprised. "And you're the girl who shows up at all my lessons to watch."_ _

_ _Vicente gaped at them. "You two know each other?"_ _

_ _"Not really, no, we're just aware of each other's presence." Ling actually did lunge out from behind the counter this time and grabbed his arm, dragging him into the restaurant. "Jia Lin, she's really cool and good at dancing, so you better not blow this because you struck gold, also why are you wearing that shirt, you look like an old man in it." She pushed him down at a table, looking furtively behind her. Madeline was walking towards the table, looking confused. "Seriously, get better clothes."_ _

_ _"Why were you watching — "_ _

_ _"Because I like watching dance." Ling whipped around, nearly smacking him in the face with her hair, and began marching back to the counter. "Why else do you think I had that K-Pop phase last year?"_ _

_ _He was suddenly struck with the memories of Ling's obsession with attractive Korean pop idols that lasted half a year and the secondhand embarrassment that had resulted from it. Vicente pinched himself as Madeline sat down at the table. "I assume that was your younger sister?"_ _

_ _"The one and only. I'm sorry if she made you uncomfortable or anything."_ _

_ _"No, of course not." She looked around the restaurant. "She shows up at the studio at every one of my lessons, sometimes with a book or a drawing pad, and likes watching us dance. But by the time all the kids have left and I'm able to talk to her, she's gone." Madeline smiled a little. "For a while, I thought she was a stalker."_ _

_ _Vicente made a mental note to tell Ling about that after Madeline had left._ _

_ _Three plates were plunked down on the table, and chopsticks were quick to follow. Leon caught one of them before it rolled off the table. "Hi, welcome to our place or something. I'll be back with your drinks soon." He gestured at the largest plate, which held four slices of red date pudding. "These are the ones you made so they're bound to be good. Now have fun."_ _

_ _He ran back to the kitchens before Vicente could thank him._ _

_ _Rubbing his temples, Vicente said, "that was Leon, my younger brother."_ _

_ _Madeline looked at the plate of pudding. "You made these?"_ _

_ _"Steamed them this morning." He took a pair of chopsticks and placed one of the puddings on Madeline's plate, shaking slightly to dislodge it. "The red layers are made of red dates, and the white ones are made of coconut milk."_ _

_ _She cut off a corner of the pudding with her chopsticks and tried it. "It's good," she remarked. "But practically everything you make is good, so I honestly shouldn't be surprised."_ _

_ _There it was again — that strange, giddy rush of pride that came whenever Madeline said something nice. Vicente suddenly felt rather hot and looked down, hoping he could blame his definitely-flushed face on the lack of air conditioner in the restaurant._ _

_ _Leon returned with their drinks. He looked at Madeline holding her chopsticks, then Vicente's expression. He placed the glasses on the table, spilling a bit in the process, and leant down to talk to him. "She can use chopsticks?" He whispered._ _

_ _He nodded, trying to act natural._ _

_ _"Marry her already!" Leon flicked the back of his head before walking away. He ran straight to the counter where Ling was waiting, already prepared to gossip._ _

_ _"Your siblings are interesting." Madeline cut off another piece of pudding and observed it, saying, "it's nice to see you're fitting in all right, even though you only moved here last month."_ _

_ _"We started out having lots of trouble." Vicente took a pudding for himself. "I started school here when I was nine, and I spent nearly every English lesson panicking because I didn't want to say anything. Back then, my accent was so thick you could only make out one of the ten words I said."_ _

_ _"Did you have any trouble with your classmates?"_ _

_ _"Not really. I think some of them went the entirety of middle school not knowing my name. And I'd already moved twice before that, so it wasn't too tough."_ _

_ _"I remember when I first moved to Quebec." Madeline picked up her glass, slender fingers pressing little circles into the condensation. "I couldn't make many friends and switching to Quebecois French was a nightmare. Having to start all over again after moving here was a nightmare, too. The only things that were the same were my dance training and my brothers, and one of those got taken away." She drew patterns on the table, streaks of water turning into droplets as they left her fingertips. "It'd be nice to have a place to settle down in for once."_ _

_ _"If I ever have to move to another country again, I'd want to stay in that place for good," he agreed. "I wish there was a way to automatically fit in, so I'd actually feel like I belonged."_ _

_ _Madeline smiled wistfully. In the wind of the fans whirring on the ceiling, a lock of spun-gold hair fell into her eyes, and she brushed it away. "I wonder what it feels like to not be a misfit."_ _

_ _He couldn't think of a way to reply. The sound of the kitchen door swinging open cut through the awkward silence and Yao bounded out, grinning widely. "Hello!"_ _

_ _Vicente was just about ready to throw himself in the oven out of embarrassment. "This is my older brother, Yao."_ _

_ _"It's, uh, nice to meet you." Madeline set down her chopsticks and held her hand out._ _

_ _"I'd shake your hand, but then I'd have to wash my hands again and I'd rather not go through that hassle." Yao crossed his arms, looking back and forth at the two of them. "Also, I see you can use chopsticks. That's really impressive, it's not every day you meet a Westerner who can eat with chopsticks properly. Back in Arlingdale I once saw one holding his chopsticks like a pencil — "_ _

_ _"I think I smell something burning," Vicente said loudly._ _

_ _Yao elbowed the side of his head. "Nothing's burning. But I'll leave you two to talk on your own. Remember, tell me if she wants to stay for dinner, and if she wants to stay the night I'll clear out the sofa."_ _

_ _"I'll be leaving in fifteen minutes," Madeline reassured. She was playing with the hem of her sleeves. "But thank you for having me."_ _

_ _Once Yao had disappeared back into the kitchen, Vicente heaved a sigh of relief. "Should we go somewhere else tomorrow?"_ _

_ _"Back to _The Cove_, if you'd like."_ _

_ _"That sounds good."_ _

_ _Leon and Ling were most definitely watching them from the counter as they left and he gave Madeline a hug goodbye. He watched as she disappeared down the road to the bus station, braid swinging behind her, then turned back to the restaurant._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Yuen yeung_ is a drink commonly served at Hong Kong tea restaurants, and consists of iced tea mixed with iced coffee.


	28. Mont Blanc

The next time Madeline visited Wang’s was during Sunday, when she arrived at the restaurant at six in the morning to find it completely empty. Apparently, Ling had wandered down to get her pencil bag while still wearing her nightclothes and found her waiting outside the door, staring right at her.

She’d immediately raced back upstairs, face red, and yelled for Vicente. She was loud enough that he woke up immediately, sat up so quickly he hit his head on the ceiling and half-fell off his bunk while seeing stars.

After having some leftover winter melon soup (the first thing he could salvage in their kitchen) for breakfast, Vicente ran down to the restaurant, his head still throbbing with pain, to meet with her.

They sat down at a table that was right in the middle of the restaurant and also the furthest away from the kitchens and the register, where two of his siblings would be working. Vicente placed two saucers of still-warm pineapple pastries and cups of his favourite jasmine tea down and wondered how on earth Madeline looked so pretty so early in the morning. She woke up at four in the morning every day to help at the Boulangerie and still managed to look impeccable, honey-golden hair perfectly braided and looking alert as ever. No sleepiness clouded those brilliant blue eyes.

He was snapped out of his reverie when he heard Ling shout in frustration. She’d changed into a denim jacket, and the logo of one of her favourite bands was stencilled in black glitter on the T-shirt underneath. The jacket was half-falling off as she jostled the register, trying in vain to pull out the drawer.

“Will she be all right?”

He shrugged and pulled a saucer towards his side of the table. “She’ll figure it out.”

At the register, Ling let loose an impressive string of curse words.

Madeline took a sip of her tea, the steam clouding her glasses for a moment. “Sorry for showing up so early, I should’ve checked your opening hours beforehand. Poor Ling looked like she was about to pass out when she saw me.”

Ling kicked the register. “JUST OPEN ALREADY, YOU USELESS PIECE OF SH — ”

“It’s fine,” Vicente said. “You’ll always be welcome here. I just hope the sight of Ling in her pyjamas wasn’t enough to traumatise you.”

She laughed. “I’ve walked in on Francis having a shower, and I don’t think anything could be worse than that. And speaking of Francis…” she pulled out a plastic box from her bag. “He insisted I bring something over to give you.” The transparent box held an impressive Mont Blanc tart. It was slightly lopsided, but the beautiful little mountain of sweetened chestnut cream still looked okay, and the golden-brown tart shell perfectly intact. The layer of powdered sugar over the cream looked like fine snow.

“Another chestnut dessert.” Madeline placed the box on the table and opened it. “I like working with them, since their flavour is so versatile. If I’d had the time, I would’ve tried to smoke the chestnuts before blending them, just to see how they’d taste.”

“It looks…” he could barely find the words to say. “Wow.”

“Give it a taste,” she prompted. “I made them just this morning.”

He pushed his fork through the pale-brown cream, watching the mountain collapse slightly as he pushed through the crunchy meringue and exposed the creamy off-white centre of the tart. Powdered sugar scattered onto the table as he brought the fork away and tasted the tart.

The tart was even better than the one he’d tasted before, the chestnut mingling with hints of vanilla and white chocolate, the meringue crisp and sweet. The cream combined all the contrasting tastes and textures together into one smooth masterpiece that went down easily, leaving nothing but a fleeting, fragrant aftertaste.

“Wow,” Vicente said again. It had to be one of the best desserts he’d ever had.

His friend was observing him with a slight smile. “Is it good?”

“Perfect. I can’t think of any other word to describe it.”

“Thank you.” Madeline looked at the remaining part of the Mont Blanc, at the crumbs of meringue that crumbled like fine white sand and the tiny smear of chestnut cream at the edge of the box. “I’m glad you like it.”

“You’re really good at baking, you know.” Vicente placed his fork down on his saucer. “Even if your brother doesn’t think so.”

“Only because baking mostly consists of waiting next to an oven. If I actually have to cook with a stove, I’m terrible. The one time I tried to make crêpes ended in disaster.”

“Is that the time it turned black because it was burnt?”

“Yes, that’s the one. When I tried to flip the crêpe, I was so nervous I accidentally threw it into the sink.” She picked up her fork and cut off a corner of the pineapple pastry. “Francis is the only person I know who can make crêpes without getting frustrated.”

“I should try making one,” Vicente mused. “I’ve made pancakes a few times before, but never something as thin and delicate as a crêpe.”

“I’m sure that it won’t be a challenge to you, and I’d love to try a crêpe you make.” Madeline brushed away a crumb of pastry from the corner of her mouth, flicking it back onto the saucer in one swift, elegant move.

Entranced, he watched as she picked up the teapot and poured a steady stream of tea into her cup, then fanned away the steam that began to rise up. “I’ll make them,” he said absently. “I’ll bring them to the Boulangerie next… Wednesday?”

“That sounds good.” She slid the teapot over to him, and it was then that Vicente noticed she had a burn mark on her right hand, already half-faded and stretching from the base of her thumb to her wrist bone. It stood out from the rest of her hand, which was so porcelain and perfect it might as well be from a statue.

He shook his head quickly and tried to clear his head, once again feeling rather heated.

…

Once the restaurant was closed for the day, and the siblings had finished their dinner, Vicente went back down to the restaurant with his cell phone. He’d found a recipe for basic crêpes online, and Wang’s already had all of the ingredients he’d need. He went into the kitchen, switched the lights on and got to work.

The batter wasn’t difficult to make, and in minutes he had a bowl full of the smooth, thin liquid ready to be fried up. Vicente took out a small frying pan and placed it on the stove, all while looking for a spoon large enough to scoop the batter onto the pan.

A few moments later, he flicked a handful of water onto the pan. It sizzled, bubbling and rising, and once all the water evaporated he dropped a knob of butter into the now-hot surface.

The butter melted quickly, and all that was left to make the crêpes.

He poured a spoonful of batter onto the pan and quickly smoothed it out with the back of his spoon, doing his best to shape it into a circle. It was so thin that one side was already cooked when he managed to grab a spatula and flip it over, accidentally folding a corner in the process. Just to be safe, Vicente kept the crêpe on the pan for a few more seconds before roughly shaking it onto a plate.

The crêpe looked like a shapeless blob, some parts thinner than the rest, and there was a tear right in the middle. There were splotches of brown where it had burned, too. He tore off a part of it and popped it into his mouth. At least it tasted all right.

Vicente polished off the rest of the failed crêpe and turned the stove on again, ready to make another.

The next crêpe he made was more even and didn’t tear, but it still wasn’t round enough. He shook it out and tried his best to smooth out the creases so that it wouldn’t look like a misshapen, wrinkled sheet and looked at it.

“Hey.”

Leon was standing in the kitchen’s doorway, his dark-brown hair still wet from his shower. He eyed the crêpe on the plate curiously and asked, “you’re still working?”

“I want to get these right.” Vicente gestured towards the pan. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until I do.”

“You mean, you want to give some to Madeline so you’re going to stay up making these until they’re flawless.” He walked into the kitchen, yellow slippers clapping against the cold tiles. “You’ve got a long way to go.”

“I know.”

He pointed at the plate. “That looks like Australia.”

“It what?”

“See, that part down there looks like South Australia.” Leon poked the bottom of the crêpe. “And that weird detached bit can be Tasmania.” He proceeded to pick up the Tasmania-shaped piece and eat it. “It tastes good, though.”

Vicente let his brother eat the rest of the crêpe and got to work making a third. Leon was right; he had a long way to go until the crêpes were good enough to give to Madeline. He had three days, and by the end of them he had to be perfect at it.


	29. Carnations

The next forty-eight hours were filled with hundreds of unsuccessful crêpes, trial-and-error and nighttime practice sessions. Vicente finally managed to pull off a passable crêpe on Tuesday night while running on nothing but coffee, and Leon had been there to see him dance around the kitchen raising the plate with said crêpe to the ceiling.

It took him another two hours after that to figure out what to put in the crêpe. He came up with a good-enough filling a few moments after Leon went to sleep — sweet, crisp almond crumble, as well as a thin caramel sauce, sandwiched the soft, thin layers of the crêpe. After taste-testing and fixing the recipe a few times, Vicente went back up to the apartment at one in the morning to sleep.

The next morning, it took Ling splashing him with ice-cold water to wake him up in time for class, and he ran off the bus towards the school building right as his first lecture (he knew he shouldn't have picked an eight o'clock class) of the day was to start.

Madeline was already in her usual seat, tapping her pen against the desk. "You're later than usual," she commented.

"Nearly overslept." He gestured to his still-damp hair. "Ling had to wake me up."

"Try setting multiple alarms on your phone," she advised. "One every five minutes. By the second one, the noise should wake you up."

"Mm." Vicente pinched himself; he'd give anything for some coffee. His notebook fell off his desk and hit the floor with a slap.

He bent over to pick it up at the same time as Madeline, grabbing the same corner she did. Then a brief tug-of-war of sorts ensued as they both tried to lift the notebook and placed it back on his desk. She looked at him, amused, and he suddenly felt very awake as he saw her smile.

Vicente turned away, now fully alert, and did his best to concentrate on what the professor was saying.

…

The cream-and-periwinkle sign hanging off of the Boulangerie's door read CLOSED in bold, flowery letters. Madeline pulled at the locked door a few times, grumbling under her breath, before releasing the doorknob in defeat. "Goodness, where did Francis go? He never closes this early."

"What if you called him?"

"No, no, he's probably busy. Should we go to Wang's?"

A few minutes later, they were on the bus away from the city centre. Vicente sent a message to Ling telling her that Madeline was coming back with him to the restaurant, only for her to reply with an unintelligible "DSFLKHJGHLKSFJLKASDJ" and "HOL UP LEMME TELL YAO".

He realised what she meant when they walked into Wang's to find their usual table already set and plates of food placed down. A stalk of dandelion was floating in a glass of water in the middle of the round table, looking completely out of place.

"Hi!" Ling was standing by the table, grinning widely. "Please take a seat and enjoy the meal we have prepared; the chef is in the kitchen should you need anything — "

"How did you prepare this in ten minutes?" Vicente picked up the glass; he could see a few ants clinging to life on the dandelion stem. "More importantly, why?"

"Because we could."

Leon power-walked across the restaurant towards them, whisking the glass out of his hand and waving at Madeline. "Brother says you have five minutes to fix up that crêpe for Madeline before he has to use the stove again, so you better hurry."

"Five minutes!?" He repeated.

"Four and a half now."

He managed to throw an apologetic smile (which probably looked more like a grimace) at Madeline before racing towards the kitchens and throwing his apron on.

Yao was chopping up fish at a terrifying speed, and he shouted over the noise of his cleaver hitting the chopping board, "hurry up, I need to steam these soon! Crazy people, ordering lou siu ping on in the afternoon… " He added afterwards.

Grabbing the bowl of batter he had left over from the night before, Vicente grabbed a frying pan with the other hand and placed it on the stove, then reached over Yao to take a box of his almond crumble.

While he was melting butter on the pan, he scanned Yao's countertop. His brother was planning to make steamed tofu puffs stuffed with minced fish and silken tofu, but had forgotten to get the tofu puffs.

Yao noticed this around the same time he did and cursed out loud, abandoning his fish to race for the cupboard. Vicente went back to his pan and poured a spoonful of batter onto the sizzling-hot surface, smoothing it out with the back of the spoon. It didn't take long for the first side to be cooked. He carefully shook the pan to flip the crêpe over next.

He shook it out onto a plate and drizzled the caramel sauce that had been bubbling next to the pan onto half of the crêpe, then sprinkled the almond crumble over the sauce. With two forks, Vicente folded the crêpe in half, then into quarters, and ran outside holding the plate.

"That was fast." Madeline hadn't touched any of the food on the table. She peered appreciatively at the plate that he put down in front of her, picking up her fork. "And it looks amazing, too."

"Give it a try," he prompted.

She cut off a corner of the crêpe and brought it to her mouth. Her eyes lit up. "It's excellent."

"Really?"

"Really." Madeline cut off another small piece, and rich, brown caramel oozed out from the gaps. "It has to be the best crêpe I've ever had." She swept up a few stray crumbs with the caramel, adding, "in fact, it has to be one of the best desserts I've ever had."

Vicente occupied himself with wiping the condensation off of his glass of milk tea, occasionally glancing up to see Madeline finishing off his creation. The hours he'd spent trying to make the crêpes had paid off in the end after all.

Unexpectedly, Madeline pushed the plate towards him. Half the crêpe was still there. "Try some."

He tried to push the plate back, stammering, "b-but I made them for you, I don't need any, so you can finish it."

"A good chef always tastes their cooking." She pushed it towards him again. "And anyways, there's nothing wrong with friends sharing food."

As he picked up his fork, Vicente wondered why his hand was shaking. He cut off part of the crêpe and tasted it. The crunchy almond crumble shone through from the soft, delicate crêpe, and the bittersweet caramel kept the sweetness and fragrance of the crumble from overpowering the dessert.

Madeline cut off a part next, her fork knocking against his briefly. "Did you use vanilla in the almond crumble?" She asked.

"I did. I managed to get vanilla paste instead of essence, which is why the crumble is darker than I expected."

"No wonder the flavour is so strong." Madeline set her fork down and tugged the sleeves of her jacket back. Vicente noticed that she was wearing a thin silver bracelet on her left wrist, and the flower-shaped charm that hung from it flashed briefly.

"Nice bracelet," he blurted.

Madeline set her hand on the table so that the charm was visible. It was a carnation that was painted a bright, glossy red. "Thanks. My ex-girlfriend gave it to me."

"Oh," he said. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."

"It's fine." She fiddled with the charm, running her thumb over the intricate petals. "I'm still friends with her and our breakup wasn't very dramatic or anything."

"That's good. And, uh, I didn't know you were a lesbian."

"I'm bi, actually." Madeline shrugged. "It's an easy mistake to make." She rubbed her arms, shivering a little despite the jacket she had on. "Anyways, it's a bit chilly in here."

"Do you feel cold?"

She nodded and moved her hand closer to him. "Feel my hand."

Vicente did so, ignoring the irrational, impulsive part of him that wanted to keep his hand over hers for far longer than just a few seconds. "Do you want some tea? Or I could lend you a jacket."

"I'll be leaving soon, so you don't have to." Madeline slid her hand out from beneath his reluctantly. "I'm sure my brothers will be back in a few moments."

He couldn't help feeling disappointed, but he nodded and stood up. "I can walk you to the bus station."

His glasses fogged over when he stepped into the stuffy afternoon air, and Madeline wiped her glasses clean as well. They made their way to the bus station, Madeline busy texting someone. They stopped at the bus station, watching other cars zip past on the black tar road.

Vicente spoke up after a rickety bicycle wobbled past them. "I'm glad you liked the crêpe."

"I'll make you one the next time we go to the Boulangerie," Madeline replied. "And thank you for making it."

The bus was a few meters away. Madeline slipped her phone in her pocket and hugged him goodbye. "See you tomorrow."

The sun was beginning to set, and it was never good to be out in the streets when everything was dark, at least not in this part of Trofilos. Vicente watched the bus disappear down the road and made his way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lou siu ping on (in Chinese, 老少平安) is a dish that consists of minced fish and tofu that is then steamed, and in this chapter Yao has decided to stuff the mixture in tofu puffs (which is not a common thing to do in most households). The dish name literally means "peace for the old and young", and is named such because it is very soft and easy to swallow without choking hazards, thus both the elderly and young children can eat it without difficulty.


	30. Revelation

It was in the middle of kneading dough when Madeline called. Vicente's phone was blaring an ear-shredding pop song (he never figured out how to change the ringtone) so loudly that his apron couldn't muffle it, and across the kitchen, Yao dropped his bowl with a shriek. "Aiyah, Jia Lin, answer it before I go deaf!"

He brushed his hands clean of the sticky dough the best he could and grabbed his phone. "Hello?"

"Hi." Madeline's voice was muffled slightly by crackling static, and sounded flatter than it usually was in person. Vicente found himself wanting to hear her speak in person, not that getting the chance to talk to her wasn't already a nice thing.

"Oh, hi." He leaned against his bench, careful not to squash the half-kneaded dough. "Uh, how are you?"

"All right. Still working on that essay that's due this Friday, though." Francis — or was that Matthieu? — appeared to be saying something in the background. "Sorry for calling so suddenly. In hindsight, I should have just texted."

"It's all right," he said quickly. "Did you want to talk to me about something?"

"I just wanted to ask you if you wanted to come over to the _Boulangerie_ tomorrow," Madeline said. "I promised I'd make you some crêpes, and I think I've practiced enough to show you."

_Practice?_ Vicente thought. Knowing her, Madeline could probably throw anything together and give it to him and it would be good; she was just that talented. He replied, "sure. Am I allowed to ask what you made, or is it a secret?"

Madeline let out a breathy laugh, and the sound of it made him smile too. "You'll know tomorrow. It'll be a mystery until then."

"All right, I'll try to guess."

"Have fun," Madeline said. "See you tomorrow morning."

"See you."

She hung up and Vicente put his phone back in the pocket of his apron. At the stove, Yao tipped his wok over, pouring the fried rice inside it onto a plate. "What were you talking about?"

"Oh, she just wanted me to go over to the _Boulangerie_ tomorrow." He went back to kneading the dough, sprinkling another pinch of flour over the countertop. "She made something special."

Leon popped his head into the kitchen from the window. "Maybe she'll surprise you with a candlelit dinner and a bottle of champagne, then after you're done with your romantic meal she'll bring you up to her apartment and the two of you can watch some hot steamy romance movie while squeezed on her couch."

"I'll be going during the afternoon, there's no way we'll be having dinner together." He began to separate the dough into pieces, rolling each one around the cold metal surface until it turned round. "And Madeline doesn't like watching movies."

His brother grabbed the plate of tea eggs from the countertop and asked, "why? Does she think they're cheesy or something?"

Vicente grabbed the bowl of custard filling and scooped up a handful of it, saying, "she says she starts spacing out after a while." He flattened a piece of snowy dough next, then dropped the custard filling onto it. "And the loud noises can get overwhelming for her at times, apparently."

"Oh. Then you two can listen to steamy romantic songs instead."

He shooed Leon away from the window. "Nothing romantic of any sort will happen tomorrow."

"That's what you say now," Leon said over his shoulder as he walked away. Vicente went back to his bench and began making another custard bun.

"Jia Long has clearly been reading too many romance novels," Yao said. He was shaking a dollop of salty, pungent shrimp paste into his wok as he spoke. "All those crazy love stories have made him forget that a boy and a girl can just be friends."

Placing another perfectly-round bun into the steamer, Vicente joked, "Heaven help his future partner if he ever gets one."

"Goodness, I don't want to even think about that." He shuddered. "The mental image is _scarring_. Anyways, what time are you coming home tomorrow?"

"Same as usual." Vicente closed the lid of the steamer and wiped his hands on his apron and said, "I might bring back some leftovers from the _Boulangerie_ if Madeline makes too much."

…

The first thing Vicente noticed about Madeline when he met her outside the campus was that she'd tied her hair up from a braid into a bun, even though she didn't have any classes to teach that day. As he neared her, a particularly strong gust of wind sent loose strands of hair flying into her face.

"Hi," she greeted. Madeline had one hand pressing her skirt down and the other swiftly trying to brush her hair away from her face. That was strange, too — he'd never seen her wear a dress.

Vicente reached into his bag and fished around until he found a small plastic box, which rattled as he handed it to Madeline. "Maybe these will help."

She opened the box and nearly dropped some of the hairpins that were stored inside. "Why do you have these?"

"I honestly don't know," he admitted. "I carried them around when Ling was a kid to help her fix her ponytails, but now that she doesn't tie her hair up much they're pretty much useless. They'll be helpful if we find ourselves locked somewhere, I guess."

Madeline slid a few hairpins to secure her golden hair and handed the box back to Vicente. "I don't think either of us really know how to use hairpins to pick locks, but we can worry about that another day. Come on, let's go."

He followed her to the bus station, the path already as familiar as the back of his hand after the dozens of times he'd walked it. Once they'd gotten onto the bus and started on their way to _Boulangerie Bonnefoy_, he asked, "I suppose you still won't reveal what you're making?"

Madeline's eyes twinkled; she nearly smiled. "Not yet. You'll have to guess a bit more before you find out."

"I made you a sweet crêpe, so are you going to be making one of those savoury ones they fill with cheese and ham?"

"You mean galettes?"

"Yes, those."

This time she actually smiled, shaking her head. "Good guess, but no. I've never been good at making savoury food."

"Hmm…" Vicente moved his bag out of the way to let Madeline lean on his arm. "Are you going to fill the crêpe with sugar?"

"That's boring," she said flippantly.

"With caramel, then."

"Still too boring."

He thought for a moment. "Are you going to put fruits in it?"

"Mmhmm." Madeline fiddled with the charm on her bracelet. "Now the question is which one I'll be using."

"Strawberries?"

"No."

"Raspberries?"

"Nope."

"Bananas, apples or kiwi?"

"No, no and no." She straightened up, brushing off his shoulder absent-mindedly and stood. "You'll know the answer soon enough."

Matthieu, who was manning the counter, barely glanced up when the two of them walked in. He stepped aside, preoccupied with slicing up a thick loaf of _brioche_, and waved his twin into the kitchen. Vicente sat down at one of the tables and began to wait.

A few minutes later, Madeline emerged from the kitchen holding a wineglass and a blowtorch. She set those down before running back to retrieve an elegant porcelain dish, on which were four crêpes soaked in some sort of dark-orange sauce. He could smell the aroma of oranges and vanilla wafting from the plate.

She picked up the wineglass, swirling the liquid inside. "You might want to move away."

Shifting away from the table, Vicente kept his eyes on Madeline as she took the blowtorch, turned it on and placed the wineglass over the flame.

Inside the glass, the liquid lit up in bright-blue fire.

"This is _Grand Marnier_," Madeline explained, slowly turning the blowtorch off. She pulled the plate of crêpes towards her and poured the still-burning liqueur over them. The flames flickered softly among the dark sauce, setting the entire plate ablaze before finally dying down. "It's commonly use to flambé desserts like this one." She sat down across Vicente, cheeks slightly flushed from being so close to the flame. "And this is called Crêpes Suzette."

He was still stunned from her act, the fire that had blazed on the plate just seconds ago alight in his memory. "That was amazing," he said. "The _Grand Marnier_ let off such an amazing smell, and it looked so pretty when you heated it up. I… wow."

Madeline seemed to flush a little bit more. "Go on, try it. I can only hope it tastes as good as it looks."

The crêpe was so soft amidst the sauce that Vicente didn't even need a knife to cut through it. He took a bite of a corner of it and nearly gasped; the mixture of rich _Grand Marnier_, bittersweet syrup, perfume-like _Cointreau_ and tart orange juice created a combination of flavours that tasted almost surreal. The crêpe itself had flavour that shone through, he hadn't expected it to taste of vanilla.

"What do you think?"

He looked up at Madeline. "It's really, really good. It's so good I literally can't think of any other way to describe it."

Those sapphire-blue eyes grew brighter, and he could not stop himself from looking into them. "You know," Madeline said, "there's actually a story behind how _Crêpes Suzette_ were made."

"What's the story?"

"You see," she began, "some people say that it was created in 1895 by the fourteen-year-old waiter Henri Charpentier, who worked at the _Cafe de Paris_ in Monaco. He was to serve the Prince of Wales, who would later become King Edward the seventh in the United Kingdom, and he brought this plate of crêpes to the Prince's table. He hadn't lit it up, though." Madeline spoke quickly, excitement bubbling in her voice as she relayed the tale. "They say that the plate caught on fire while Charpentier was trying to serve it to the Prince and, as he tasted the crêpes after the accident, he realised that it became even better. The Prince, who adored it too, decided to name the dish _Crêpes Suzette_, after a young girl who was at the table with him."

Vicente had barely heard the end of Madeline's story. Her words had faded away somehow, and all he could focus on was her passionate smile, the way she tripped over her words to talk to him, her hands, sometimes idle and sometimes moving, gesticulating with every sentence she said. _I'd listen to her talk for hours on end,_ he thought. _I'd want nothing more than to listen to her talk and laugh and see her smile._

The realisation was nothing like how the movies described it. There was no pink-tinged vision or suggestive music or anything at all. He didn't feel butterflies inside. His only thought was a short, simple _oh_.

_I like her._

Was it liking someone if you wanted to talk to them every day, laugh with them and try to make them smile? Was it liking someone if you wanted to pull them close and hold their hand?

It had to be. Vicente's heart raced as he looked back up at Madeline, and discovered that he was falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dish that Leon takes out to serve is a plate of tea eggs, a popular food in Taiwan. They are made by marinating hard-boiled eggs in a mixture of tea, soy sauce and different spices, and way the shells are cracked before being soaked leaves a dark web of the marinade across the egg white. They're so common that even convenience stores sell them.


	31. When You Wish Upon A Star

Something was new again.

Vicente thought he'd be free of trying to adapt to something new at last before what he found out yesterday. Of course, realising he liked his friend was nowhere near as terrifying as finding out his parents would get divorced or meeting his stepmother, but the discovery had been jarring enough that he'd drifted off in the middle of his evening shift and nearly burned an entire batch of pineapple pastries.

The inexplicable happiness he got whenever he spent time with Madeline or heard her say something nice finally had a name. Or, at least he thought it did. Acknowledging he liked her didn't mean he had a crush on her, did it?

For some reason, "crush" sounded like an awfully childish word. It was a word to describe a twelve-year-old wanting to date their classmate because they sat next to each other and they worked on a project together once; it was a word best suited for kindergarten kids who played at marriage. It didn't feel like a word that fit how he felt.

His younger siblings would call him an idiot if they heard that. Vicente could practically hear Leon scoffing, "whatever word you use, you can't deny the fact that you've got the hots for Madeline."

Goodness, Leon would have a field day if he heard about all this. He couldn't know, not yet. Ling might handle the news slightly better, Vicente thought, even if she did talk a lot about wanting to be an aunt. And what about Yao?

"Oi, where the hell have you gone off to?"

Ling was standing in front of him, her wet hair dripping water onto his shirt. She kicked him lightly, asking, "are you going to take a shower or not? Jia Long and Yao are both done, and all while they were in the bathroom you've been drifting off to Pluto or something. Are you okay, Brother?"

He blinked. "Oh. I'm fine, just a little tired." Vicente got up from their dining table, the ache in his shoulders from a whole day of work making itself known again, and went to the washroom.

A steaming mug of hot milk tea was waiting on the dining table for him when he emerged, as were his siblings. Leon was munching on a leftover egg tart, and next to him Yao was writing something down in his chequebook. His older brother looked up as he sat down, saying, "just tell me if you need more tea, I know you need plenty of energy for that essay."

Picking up the mug, Vicente said, "my essay isn't due until next Tuesday. I can wrap it up a little later."

Leon reached for another egg tart. "Yeah, well, the calendar you hung up in our room says the hard deadline is tomorrow. And the last time I saw you writing it, you were only halfway done. So… yeah."

He nearly spat out his tea. "Wait, what?"

"That moment when a high-school dropout has better memory than a college student, am I right?" Leon cracked.

Just barely keeping himself from swearing, Vicente ran into his room to get the laptop that he shared with Yao. Like his brother said, he still had half of his essay to go. That meant he had a little over twelve hours to write four thousand words.

"See, this is why we don't leave things 'til the last minute." Leon popped the rest of his second egg tart into his mouth and took another.

Still writing, Yao squinted at him. "I swear your stomach is a bottomless pit."

"Nah, I'm just keeping these tarts from being wasted. It's a very noble cause."

While his brothers were talking, Vicente opened up his word document and began to write. He only got a few paragraphs in before Madeline suddenly began occupying his thoughts. Madeline talking, Madeline smiling, Madeline writing with that beautiful, intense expression…

Before he could stop himself, he picked up his phone and tapped into his texts with her. Not even a minute later, Madeline sent a message reading:

_? it's late, why are you online? (Sent 00:36)_

So she was awake, too. He replied:

_I could ask you the same question (Sent 00:36)_

More messages popped up soon after.

**Madeline**   
_I'm about to go to sleep (Sent 00:37)_   
_You should too, you need erst (Sent 00:38)_   
_*Rest (Sent 00:38)_

As much as he didn't want to tell someone he desperately wanted to impress that he was an idiot who'd forgotten the due date of an essay and had to write half of it overnight, lying to her would be even worse. Vicente decided to tell her the truth.

_Well (Sent 00:39)_   
_I haven't finished the essay that's due tomorrow (Sent 00:39)_   
_Hopefully I won't have to pull an all-nighter (Sent 00:40)_

She replied:

_Oh dear (Sent 00:41)_   
_Good luck, don't sleep too late (Sent 00:41)_   
_Actually (Sent 00:42)_   
_Why don't I share my docs with you? (Sent 00:42)_   
_You can't copy me word for word of course but maybe I have points that you don't (Sent 00:42)_

He took another sip of his milk tea and considered the offer. That would technically be cheating, but he was honestly too tired to care.

_Oh goodness you're a lifesaver (Sent 00:44)_   
_Thanks so much (Sent 00:44)_

A few moments later, an email popped up inviting him to join Madeline's word document. She also sent a few other messages reading:

_Well you helped me cram for that quiz last week (Sent 00:45)_   
_So I kind of owe you one (Sent 00:45)_   
_I'm going to sleep now, good luck writing (Sent 00:46)_   
_Goodnight (Sent 00:46)_

With a smile on his face, Vicente texted her "goodnight" back and returned to work.

…

Grateful that he'd at least managed to get two hours of sleep, Vicente sat down next to Madeline in class the next day holding a thermos of tea that was already half-empty. He had to run to the campus library to print his essay out before going to the classroom, and had to stop to catch his breath before returning Madeline's greeting.

"Let's go to _The Cove_ for lunch," she proposed. "You look like you need quite a bit more coffee to get through the day."

"Mmhmm." He rested his head on his desk, the sides of his glasses digging into his cheek.

"You look really tired, you know."

"I think I can hear colours." Vicente squinted at the board. Was this how getting a hangover felt like? "I can hear colours and see sound."

Madeline laughed. "Seeing sound, you say? What does my voice look like?"

"Music." He blinked. "Wait, that's a sound. Uh… your voice looks like flowers. And concert halls, I think. I don't know." Vicente reached for his thermos again. "I'm tired."

"Hang in there." She flipped her notebook open, saying, "I'll wake you up if you fall asleep."

…

The two of them went for lunch at one in the afternoon, and by then Vicente felt ready to lie down on the ground and pass out right then and there. He'd already finished his tea and had ordered a cup of black coffee to give him a boost of energy; he was pinching himself to stay awake. "I have no idea how my brother managed to pull all-nighters when he was in university," he mumbled, taking a sip of his coffee. "This tastes so bitter, why do you like it?"

Madeline had ordered a mug of floral tea, which sent out steam that smelled strongly of roses. "I guess I'm just used to it," she replied. "Matthieu hogs all the cream and sugar at home, so there's never any left for Francis and me."

Vicente yawned. "Still can't believe I wrote half an essay in five hours. There must be so many typos in it."

"I'm sure you'll do all right, you've gotten good grades in all your work before this." She nibbled on a spoonful of cottage pie. "By the way, do you mind if I ask a question?"

"Go ahead."

"What do you wish for?" Madeline's eyes were bright as she asked. "What do you long for so badly that you would pour all your heart and soul into hoping that you got it, even if the chances of that happening were close to none?"

He thought. Nobody had asked him anything like that before — hell, not many people wanted to know that much about him. What _did_ he want? "Well," Vicente said slowly, "I think I want my siblings to be safe and happy."

"And nothing for yourself?"

"No, I don't think so." He finished off his cup of bitter coffee. "And how about you? What do _you_ wish for?"

"I want to be known as just Madeline. Not Francis' younger sister or Matthieu's twin. And not Madeline, the girl at the counter who's strange and never pays attention to anything. Just Madeline Bonnefoy."

It was a simple wish. And at that moment, Vicente wanted ever so absurdly to become a genie or a sorcerer, and cast some sort of spell so that Madeline would never feel overshadowed or looked down upon ever again. But he couldn't. All he could offer was reassurance. "Maybe that wish will come true," he said.

"Maybe."

Watching Madeline across the table, stunning and poignant as ever, Vicente realised that he had something — someone else to wish for.


	32. The Moon

"Another dessert?"

Folder in hand, rapidly flipping through yellowed pages, Yao snapped, "_aiyah_, why do you make that sound like a bad thing?"

"It isn't," Vicente said. "It's just that we added osmanthus jelly to the menu last Saturday. Isn't it a little too soon to add something else?"

"It's not a permanent addition." Yao shut the folder and placed it back onto the dining table. "You only have to suffer through making something new for the first two weeks of October, then we remove it from the menu and serve it again next year."

He squinted at his brother. "What sort of dessert are you planning? There's no way we can serve something for only two weeks a year."

Yao leaned forward, smiling slightly. "Do you remember what holiday's coming up in two weeks?"

Vicente went through his mental calendar, jumping ahead to the sixth of October. "Are you talking about the Mid-Autumn Festival?"

"Well, duh."

"Nobody celebrates that in the West. Our customers will have no idea why we're serving mooncakes — assuming that's what you're planning to make."

"Jia Lin _ah_, bold of you to assume people will question the origins of a new dish. They'll just eat it, say it's good, leave a generous tip and leave." Yao said. "And if they do ask, we can just say, 'oh, this is something we eat during this thing called the Mid-Autumn Festival which we celebrated where we came from'. Easy as that."

"All right, that's fair." He thought of the mooncakes he'd eaten all those years ago, fist-sized treats that were sometimes stuffed with fudgy, smooth lotus paste and powdery salted egg yolk, sometimes with flavourful custard that oozed out appetisingly from the middle of the mooncakes when they were heated up and cut apart, and were so filling that they could easily substitute a meal. Their parents had always bought them from stores. "But do you know how to make mooncakes?"

Yao's smile turned sheepish at that. "That's a very good question. I'm researching recipes that I can modify, and hopefully I'll have something ready by the end of this month."

"What type are you planning to serve?"

"Not snowy mooncakes, that's for sure. I always thought those were overrated," he mulled. "I might only fill them with lotus paste, since salted egg yolks cost too much. By the price they're sold for at the market you'd think they were made of diamonds! Is there any type you'd prefer to make?"

"Not really," Vicente answered. "As long as I get to make them, I don't mind." Maybe Yao would decide to serve mooncakes with ice cream at the centre. Maybe he'd develop a recipe for mooncakes with a chocolate filling. Whatever he came up with, it would most definitely be an adventure to make.

…

_CRACK!_

The rolling pin smashed the plastic bag without mercy, breaking the rock sugar inside to pieces. Ling swung the pin a second time, hitting the bag again and again until the sugar was all but powder.

"Is there something on your mind?" Vicente asked, watching her shake the now-pulverised rock sugar into a bowl and put another solid block of it into the bag.

"No, nothing bad." Ling continued her ruthless assault, smacking so hard the table seemed to shake. The sound of the rolling pin hitting the sugar echoed throughout the entire apartment, deafening _bang_ after _bang_ as she cracked away. "Why do you ask?"

"You're whacking the sugar really hard. Almost like it's a substitute for someone's face."

"I'm not that vindictive." She turned the bag over and continued hitting. "It's just fun to watch the sugar crack into little bits. And it's fun to hit stuff too, I guess." Ling poured out the contents of the bag and popped a larger piece of rock sugar into her mouth. "Is that enough?"

"It should last us until next Sunday." Vicente shook the sugar around in the bowl. "At least, it should be enough for tomorrow's batch."

Ling pinched another chunk of rock sugar and bit into it. "You need to add more agar into those things, they always come out too jiggly."

He thought about the suggestion. "I'll give it a try," he promised. "And remember to brush your teeth."

She snorted derisively. "Okay, Dad." Ling polished off the rest of her sugar and ran off.

While his sister went back to her room, Vicente took the bowl down to the kitchen in Wang's. He took jars of agar, wolfberries and dried osmanthus flowers from their cupboard and ran to fetch a pitcher of water, then a saucepan.

While melting a few strips of agar in the boiling water, he poured out some of the crimson wolfberries onto a plate, and beside it went the pretty yellow osmanthus flowers. The kitchen was silent save for the sound of simmering water; not even the noise from cars outside managed to make its way in. It was Vicente's favourite time of day, no doubt — nothing could ever beat the tranquillity of cooking alone at night, without the hustle and bustle of work to make him nervous.

Once the agar was melted, he poured in a handful of the rock sugar and stirred, watching as the golden-brown chunks slowly dissolved into the hot water. The wolfberries and dried osmanthus went in next, and not long after the mixture started simmering, he began to smell the fragrant, delicate perfume of the little golden flowers.

The jelly was left to set in the refrigerator next, and Vicente tended to the saucepan, hooking it back onto the wall once it was clean and dry. He stepped out of the kitchen for a moment, looking out of the restaurant windows and at the streets. The night was only illuminated by the harsh glow of streetlamps, and he could barely make out the stores and cars that were usually so clear to see in the daylight.

He must've spent too much time staring rather blankly out the window, as the next thing he recalled was his phone's timer beeping. Vicente went back inside and inspected the jellies. He popped one out of the mold and placed it carefully on a plate. It wasn't as soft or wobbly as before, thanks to the extra agar he'd added, but thankfully that didn't make the jelly any less sweet. The wolfberries scattered throughout added surprising bursts of tartness, and its redness stuck out from the otherwise pastel-coloured jelly in bright spots.

As he ate, he started thinking of a dessert he'd tried two days ago — a slice of warm, rich black-cherry _clafoutis_ Madeline had made and shared with him. Like the osmanthus jelly, the sweetness of the _clafoutis_ was cut through with sharp black cherries, and those berries had stood out among the otherwise-unassuming beige crust. But the similarities between the two desserts ended there; the fluffy, custardy flan Madeline had whipped up that day was nothing like the jelly he just made.

Vicente finished the rest of his jelly and washed the plate. Somehow, every other thought led to Madeline these days. It was probably normal, for someone to think about the person they had feelings for a lot, and to smile while lost in those thoughts, but he wasn't at all used to having someone who wasn't his siblings on his mind so often. He'd only known Madeline for nearly two months, surely it was weird to like and constantly think of someone he'd been acquainted with for such a short time.

The dull, blurred reflection of his face in the tap revealed that he was blushing. So that was why he suddenly felt heated-up. Vicente sighed, splashed his face with water from the sink and ran back upstairs. Maybe those thoughts would disappear with sleep.


	33. Lessons from the Littlest

It was strange, how the West always went a little crazy when Halloween was close — not even close, actually, just when it was the same month as the holiday. October had barely started, but stores all around Trofilos had already begun to hang up decorations, adorning their exteriors with black-and-orange tinsel, fake pumpkins and bat plushies. In fact, it felt like _Wang's_ was one of the only places in the entire city that hadn't transformed into a Halloween haven.

Even _Boulangerie Bonnefoy_ was decorated for the season. Francis had painted a number of black cats and bats on the glass of his cake display, and inside the display were a number of autumn treats. On one stand was a pumpkin pie, on another was a plate of éclairs covered with glossy orange icing, and right in the centre stood a dead tree made out of fondant, caramel spiderwebs strung between the bare branches.

"On Halloween, Matthieu will bring out a bowl full of candy for any kids that pass by," Madeline told him, "and most of the time we run out before ten o'clock."

Vicente picked up one of the nougats she'd placed on the table and examined it. "Do you dress up? You know, to match the trick-or-treaters or something?"

"Francis and I do." She took a nougat from the plate and bit into it. "Last year, he had the brilliant idea of dressing up like Peter Pan despite not looking young in the slightest."

"That's mean, Francis still looks pretty youthful."

Madeline chewed on her nougat, remarking, "he looks like a shrivelled old man and anyone who says otherwise is wrong."

"Ouch." He took another nougat, enjoying the rich pistachio flavour that came from it. "What did you dress up as?"

"Francis somehow got me to play Tinkerbell." She shuddered. "Thank goodness nobody took any photos, or I would've died of embarrassment. Matthieu had the right idea, deciding not to dress up."

"Well, I'm sure you looked great," he said, adding quickly, "but again, you look great every day."

Why did he say that?"

Rosy pink dusted Madeline's cheeks. "Thanks."

"...you're welcome." Maybe the nougat he was eating was poisoned and he'd keel over on the spot. That would be less awkward. "Uh, anyways, these nougats are good." Or maybe he'd choke on the almonds in the candies.

"Matthieu made them," she said. "He's always been better at making candy than pastries." Madeline gestured to the display. "He made the tree."

He looked back at the tree and its intricate, twisted branches. "That's impressive. Did you make the pie?"

"I made the éclairs. It was my first time making something with choux pastry, but thankfully it turned out fine." She glanced at Vicente. "Would you like to try one?"

"No thanks. At least, not now. Er, can I take one home?"

She smiled, and the sight of it made his heart rush. How could the simplest of actions make him blush and act like an idiot?

"You can split it with your siblings." Madeline returned with a plastic box, one of the éclairs inside. "If I recall, Leon has a sweet tooth, right?"

"That's Ling," he corrected. "Leon is the one who can eat everything edible in a supermarket and ask for seconds."

"Oh, right. Anyways, here you go." She pressed the lid shut over the box and handed over to him — or at least tried to. The box fell from her fingers before it could reach him.

Luckily, he managed to catch the box before it hit the ground. "That was close."

"Sorry." Madeline tugged on her sleeves absentmindedly, looking at the floor. "My hand slipped and I couldn't catch it in time."

"It's all right, it's not like the box is made of glass or something." Vicente picked up his bag from the table. "I'll be going now."

"See you tomorrow."

"Bye." He pushed the door open, feeling the cool autumn breeze, and stepped out of the Boulangerie.

…

The moment he got home, Ling grabbed the box holding the éclair before he could explain. "Ooh, you brought this back for us?"

"Yeah." Vicente took the box back and placed it on an empty table, opening the lid. "Can you go ask Leon if he wants any?"

"_JIA LONG!_" Ling shouted, loud enough to make him jump. "DO YOU WANT FOOD?"

"No thanks," Leon yelled back. Vicente rubbed his ears. "I'm not hungry."

"Leon, not hungry?" Ling said incredulously. "I never thought that was possible." She picked up the éclair and tore it in half, oozing cream over her fingers. "Whatever, that means more for us." She handed a piece to him.

The orange glaze on top of the éclair turned out to be flavoured with orange zest, and it was especially delicious paired with the sweet, smooth vanilla custard that Madeline had filled the pastry with. And the choux pastry itself was light as a cloud, melting in his mouth so quickly that it was like it had never been there in the first place. It seemed Madeline kept outdoing herself, making one culinary masterpiece after another, each one more amazing than the last.

His sister licked cream off her fingers. "Damn, that was really good," she commented.

"I'll tell Madeline you said that." Vicente brushed crumbs off his fingers and closed the lid of the box. "But you're right, it was amazing. I don't think any of her pastries could turn out bad."

"You're so weird, you know, with how you're always so humble when it comes to the things you make, but jump to sing praises about any of Madeline's creations. You're like her personal cheerleader or something."

He shrugged. "It's nice to compliment good things."

"You say that like the stuff you make isn't good."

"I — well — " It took him a while to think of how to reply. "I have you guys to tell me my desserts are good. Francis doesn't say anything nice about Madeline's pastries so there's only Matthieu and I, and Matthieu isn't around much. But, uh, I'm not only saying nice things about her because she has nobody else, because she's genuinely a nice person and I love being around her and it's only fair that people know how talented she is. I probably should've stopped talking a while ago."

"Yeah, you should've." Ling slapped his back, nearly slamming him onto the table. "Now go to the kitchen, we still have a few hours before the day's over."

…

"I bet Leon's going to win."

Yao snorted from next to him. "He's got arms like twigs. The girl's going to win."

"Leon's beat me in arm-wrestling before." Vicente flung a dirty towel over the bench and into the laundry basket waiting beside it. "If he can beat his older brother, he can beat a girl his age."

"You have arms like twigs, too." Yao poured a basin full of freshly-cleaned spoons and forks onto the wiped counter and began drying them off. "Look at that girl, she's built like a wrestler. She could snap Jia Long in half if she tried."

While taking off his apron and hair net, he kept his eyes on his little brother, who was busy having an arm-wrestling contest with one of the last remaining customers. Ling was ogling them in the background while clearing up dirty plates. "If Leon wins, I get to take a shower first."

"And if the girl wins, I take it first?"

"That's a deal."

He'd barely finished that sentence when something crashed outside. Vicente opened the kitchen door and looked out to see Leon with his hand pinned down to the table, the girl sitting across him laughing in triumph. "Darn it, you're going to use up all the hot water."

"Too bad!" Yao pushed out from behind him, watching as Leon flexed his wrist and gave the victor a grudging handshake. "You should've known that Leon's tiny and fragile."

"I can hear you, you know." Leon walked up to them, flexing his wrist. Vicente could see the red lines in the back of his hand where his opponent's fingers had dug in. "I swear, Ella has arms of steel." He waved at Ella as she left the restaurant, holding hands with the smiling girl beside her. "Her girlfriend promised her a kiss if she won, apparently. No wonder she pushed so hard."

"Are you going to ask her for a rematch?" Vicente asked.

"What, do you want to shower with cold water again?"

"Shut up, Yao."

"You're accepting Jia Long's loss even worse than he is." Yao flicked him on the back of his head. "I'm going back upstairs to enjoy my nice hot shower."

As he went back to their apartment, Vicente cleaned up the rest of the kitchen, Leon trailing behind him. "My hand hurts."

"Of course it does."

"I'm never challenging a customer to an arm-wrestling match again."

"Not even if that Ella girl comes back for a rematch?"

"Except if that happens. And if I'm guaranteed to win." He groaned. "Ow."

Ling was still outside, and her voice was muffled from the door as she called, "_èr gē_!"

Vicente nudged Leon. "Go and see what she wants."

He nudged him back. "No, stupid. She was calling for her _second brother_. That's you."

"Oh." He hurried out and found her sitting on one of the tables. "What is it?"

Ling lifted her legs up onto the table and began to sit cross-legged. "So you like Madeline."

"What?"

"I was just joking before, but now I'm, like, ninety percent sure you're crushing madly on her. So are you?"

He pulled a chair down from another table and sat down on it. "How did you know?"

"Ah, so you do have a massive crush on her. Not that it wasn't obvious, though." Ling flicked her hair. "What's stopping you from asking her out?"

"Well first of all, we've only known each other for two months."

She huffed. "Time doesn't matter. You two are close, you could easily date. And anyways, some couples have known each other for even less."

"Even then…" Vicente sighed. "Even then, look at me and look at her. She's pretty, amazingly talented and sweet. I'm a whiny gremlin who can't do anything except bemoan his awful life. In fact, that's what I'm doing now."

"Who cares?" Ling crossed her arms. "You need confidence, you idiot. If you can't convince yourself that you're plenty lovable, how are you going to convince Madeline?"

"Okay, say I've gained self-esteem, which is a challenge in itself." He looked up at her, feeling like an idiot as he asked, "what if she doesn't like me back? What if this affects our friendship or something? I don't want to lose a friend just because I like her."

"Hiyah, that's your problem. You think too much and do too little." She kicked his chair. "Stop worrying about hypothetical scenes when you haven't done anything to make them happen. Just do it." She grinned. "Just _diu_ it."

"Ling!"

"What? I'm right." She kicked his chair again. "Go for it. Stop losing sleep over this, because I know you're tossing and turning at the crack of dawn thinking about her or something. It's the same philosophy with most stuff, you know. Don't plan too hard for something, or by the time you've got a strategy in place, it'll be too late to put it in action."

Vicente smiled. "I never thought I'd be getting life advice from my baby sister."

"What do you mean? I'm smarter than all three of you brothers combined." Ling jumped down from the table. "At least, I can function better."


	34. Defending Her Honour

It had been weeks since Vicente went to _Boulangerie Bonnefoy_ on Sunday mornings — since his workload from both school and the restaurant had increased, Ling had been sent to buy the puff pastry they couldn't make themselves just yet. He'd begun to miss the early-morning meetings that he and Madeline shared, where they sometimes exchanged desserts to eat for breakfast and talked about whatever was on their minds before time slipped past and they returned to their duties.

To his utter delight, though, his course at university was going through an unexpected honeymoon phase, meaning he'd have more time to himself with less work to do. In a random act of impulse, Vicente convinced Yao to cover his work for the first hour of the morning and took the bus to the city centre. Ling's talk from the night before had definitely gotten to him.

Matthieu was standing at the counter that morning, chewing on a pale-golden piece of candy while staring off into space. He finished off his candy when he noticed Vicente's arrival and waved. The tips of his fingers were covered in powdered sugar. "Oh, hello."

"Morning."

"Are you looking for anything in particular?" Matthieu adjusted his glasses, leaving a spot of white on the dark-blue frame. "The first batch of _pain de campagne_ for today is nearly done, you can stick around for a while if you want some."

"I'm not really here to buy anything." He looked up at the taller boy, replying, "actually, I was, uh, wondering if Madeline was around."

He smiled. "Oh, you're here to see her. I thought so." Matthieu hooked a thumb towards the door behind him. "She's in there, probably helping to finish up some _sablé_ cookies. You're going to have to wait."

"I don't mind." It was strangely relaxing to stay in the _Boulangerie_, smelling the delicious pastries baking away and listening to the ever-present jazz music. Even without Madeline around, it was a nice place to be in.

"Suit yourself," Matthieu said nonchalantly. He brushed his hands clean and picked up a tray from the counter. "While you wait, do you want a marshmallow?"

Vicente blinked. "Pardon?"

"I'm supposed to let these cool for a few more minutes before packaging them, but I'm sure Francis wouldn't mind if we had a taste test." He showed him the tray, which was filled with fluffy, cream-coloured marshmallows covered with a thin dusting of powdered sugar. "Go on, take one."

"Oh." He went up to the counter and took a square of the marshmallow. "Thank you."

The marshmallow was as fluffy as it looked, dissolving into a cloud of sweetness as he bit into it. It tasted strongly of maple syrup, an ingredient which must've been the reason the marshmallows weren't pure white. He dusted powdered sugar off his hands, commenting, "it's good."

"That's good to hear." Matthieu set the tray down again. Somewhere inside the kitchen, a _DING_ sounded loud enough that he could hear it through the door. "Oh, those must be the cookies. Madeline should be out soon."

True to his word, the door swung open a few minutes later and Madeline emerged, eyes downcast and her hair half-concealing her face. "Your turn in the kitchen," she said softly. "The _sablé_ are airing out in oven B."

Her brother nodded, unhooking his apron and putting it on. He caught the heavy door before it closed and slipped through. "Your friend's waiting."

Madeline looked up, noticing Vicente. "Good morning." Her voice was unusually stilted.

"Hi." He noticed that her eyes were red. "Are you all right?"

She blinked hard, still staring at her feet. "I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

"You look like you have something on your mind, that's all."

"I don't," she replied. Madeline looked up and smiled. "I'm fine, really. Don't worry about it."

Vicente recognised that smile, the quivery, tiny one that didn't reach her eyes. It was one that he'd seen Yao give when they still lived in Arlingdale and he was weighed down with schoolwork, and one he'd felt himself forcing his face to make in an attempt to convince others that he was doing all right. But poor Madeline looked like she was holding back tears, and he didn't want to push her any further. "If you say so," he settled for saying. "But if you ever want to talk about anything…"

"I don't," Madeline repeated, "not now. It's just Francis being Francis, nothing new." She wiped her eyes swiftly. "It's quite early. Have you had breakfast yet?"

It was then that he realised he hadn't. "No, I guess I forgot."

"Neither have I." She took a loaf of _brioche_ off one of the shelves and a sample jar of jam from the row underneath.

It took him a while to realise that Madeline was suggesting. He took a seat at the table where Madeline had set the _brioche_ and jam down on and waited as she sat down across him, cutting out two thick slices from the loaf. She spread the jam over the pale-yellow _brioche_, placed one slice on a plate and pushed it over to him. "We haven't met up like this in a while. Since school started we've been pretty busy, so it's nice to be able to do this. You know, just the two of us."

_Just the two of us._ The words resounded in Vicente's head. He could feel his heart pounding. "Yeah," he agreed. "This is nice."

Madeline bit into her slice of bread, and he followed suit. The tartness of the apples and sweetness of the caramel in the jam complemented the soft, rich _brioche_ well, and he marvelled at how the _Boulangerie_ could make something as boring as bread and jam so delicious.

"Yao turned twenty-three yesterday, didn't he?" Madeline tore off a corner of her brioche. "I remember you showing me a photo of the birthday cake you made."

"He spent lots of time lamenting how quickly time passes, and how he swears he was a teenager just months ago, but yes, it was his birthday yesterday."

"Tell him I wish him a belated happy birthday," she said. "Are any of your other siblings' birthdays in October?"

"Ling's is on the twenty-fifth, a few weeks later, and Leon's birthday is in July." Vicente watched her pull a piece of tissue out of her pocket and pat her rosy lips clean. "There's another special occasion on Friday, though."

"Really?"

"It'll be the Mid-Autumn Festival," he explained. "We celebrated it back when we lived in Taiwan. We're planning to sell mooncakes this weekend because of it."

She furrowed her brow. "What are mooncakes?"

"These sort of pastries, I guess. They're sometimes filled with lotus paste or custard. We eat them during the Festival."

"I'd like to try them one day."

Vicente smiled, entranced by how intrigued Madeline looked. "Once I figure out how to make them, I'll bring you one."

She perked up, that radiance returning to her expression at that. "I'd love that."

The kitchen door suddenly swung open and Francis pranced out, his arms covered up to the elbow in some kind of dough. "Hello," he said quickly to Vicente, before turning to Madeline. "Can you get back into the kitchen? I don't know how Matthieu messed up while making caramel but he somehow did, and we're fresh out of that _sablé_ dough you made this morning."

Matthieu burst out of the kitchen next, the entire front of his apron covered in caramel. "That can of sweetened condensed milk you helped me heat up earlier this morning just _exploded_. I don't know how, but it did."

Francis wiped his hands rapidly on his apron, all while lecturing, "you must've forgotten to cover the top of the can with water, not that I would've expected anything else from you. My goodness, why do you have to be so idiotic?"

"Sorry," Madeline mumbled. Her eyes were glued to the floor again.

"'Sorry' isn't going to clean up the mess in the kitchen." Francis massaged his temples. "Just go in and fix what you did. And for Heaven's sake, just let Matthieu do this sort of thing next time." He sighed. "It's clear that you can't be trusted with things like this."

A strange jolt of anger rushed through Vicente, and he stood up. "Don't talk to her like that."

Francis turned. "Huh?"

No turning back now. He forced himself to look straight at Madeline's brother and continued, "don't treat Madeline like an idiot, she's human too. You can't just — just tear her down like that for a little mistake."

"You mean a little mistake that's costing us time and money?" His expression softened slightly. "It's going to take a while to clean up the kitchen, and even longer to make another batch of caramel. Surely you understand why I'm frustrated."

"It's likely that she didn't even mess up." Vicente glanced at Madeline, who looked about ready to cry, and reached out a hesitant hand to her. She didn't object when he placed it comfortingly on her shoulder. "Maybe she'd covered the top of the can and the water just evaporated, or it just spilled. Don't accuse her of something you just assumed."

There was silence as Francis just stared at him, then he sighed again. "You're right. I'm sorry, Madeline, I shouldn't have lost my temper."

Madeline wasn't looking at him, but she nodded mutely in acknowledgement. Matthieu's eyes were narrowed, and he pointed at Vicente. "Do you mind if I talk to you for a moment?"

"Er, all right."

He opened the door to the kitchen. "Follow me."

After another glance at Madeline, he followed Matthieu into the kitchen. One of the walls was splattered with half-burnt caramel, and the offending can sat on the counter beneath it. Matthieu cleared his throat, bringing his attention back to him. "Thank you for standing up for Madeline just now."

Vicente was still shaking a little from the confrontation. "It wasn't right to let Francis insult her like that."

"You care about her very much."

"What?" Does he know?

"I don't know if you care about her as a friend, or as something more, but whatever." Matthieu tugged on his apron, careful to avoid the dirtied parts. "I just want to make sure you don't have any ulterior motives."

"I don't," he said. "Madeline's just really close to me, and I don't want to see her hurt."

"Neither do I." Matthieu looked right at him, crossing his arms. "Look, I'm in no position to dictate what you or my sister can do. We're adults, we can do what we want. I'm not going to do anything, because I shouldn't, but in return you have to promise to treat her properly."

"That's an easy promise to make, I wouldn't dream of doing anything that might hurt Madeline, even if it were an accident." Vicente held out his hand jokingly. "Do we have to pinky swear on that?"

Matthieu let out a puff of laughter. "Nah, just go."

Madeline approached him as he left the kitchen. "What did Matt want to talk to you about?"

"Nothing much, he just wanted to make sure I was being nice. I think I got his approval."

"That's good." She looked down at him. "Thank you, by the way. For standing up to Francis."

Her grateful smile somehow made all thoughts disappear from his mind, so he settled for stepping forward and pulling her into a hug. "I have to get going now, but I'll see you again tomorrow."

"I'll meet you at the bus station," she called as he left.


	35. Hopeless

"Have you asked her out yet?"

Leon had asked him the same question the evening before, when he came home from spending an afternoon with Madeline — he'd apparently heard the news from Ling. Both last evening and today, he gave his brother the same answer, and he'd responded the same way: "why?"

"Because," he replied on the second day, "it'd be awkward. I can't just interrupt Madeline in the middle of drinking coffee and go, 'hey wanna go out with me?'."

"Of course it would be." Leon rolled his eyes. "That's not even how you ask someone out! You don't randomly throw in a confession while having a conversation, dummy. You wait until a special moment when it's all quiet and the two of you are alone together, then you pop the question. It's like proposing but without a ring."

Vicente stared at him. "How do you know how to ask someone out?"

Leon stared back. "Okay, maybe that's how they do it in romance movies. But the couples mostly worked out in the end. So if you do the same thing, it should be fine."

"I'm not going to ask her out. Yet."

"What's stopping you?" Leon demanded. "I mean, now that you know telling Madeline you like her in the middle of a conversation isn't how it's done, you could easily ask her to meet up with you under the moonlight later today and ask her."

Vicente replied, "because first of all, asking someone to meet up with you in the dead of night is creepy, even if it works in books or stuff. I'll tell her when I'm ready." He ruffled Leon's hair. "You're too invested in my sorry excuse of a love life, you know."

He went back to the kitchen as Leon sulked behind him, marching off to clear someone's table. Yao was hard at work, as usual, chopping up shrimps so quickly his knife was a blur. Vicente took his place at his bench and eyed the sheets of paper taped to the wall. Yao had finally figured out how to make mooncakes filled with lotus root, and the newly-written recipe for it was placed next to the ones for egg tarts, custard buns and other desserts.

"No orders for you yet," Yao shouted over the noise. "Go heat up some red date pudding and prepare some tarts."

He placed three servings of stone-cold pudding into one of the steamers to finish cooking and pulled the tart shells and filling out of the fridge. Soon, a tray of egg tarts was in the oven, and Vicente went to Yao's bench once the oven door was closed. "What do I do now?"

"Make beverages." Yao pointed to the row of orders hanging by a cord on the wall. "People love your yuen yeung, they say you get it right every time."

Swiping a clean glass from the shelf, he got to work making the drink. All around him, the sounds and smells of dishes coming together combined into a melodious, fragrant symphony. This feeling would never get old.

…

Even though the doors of Wang's were closed for the night, Vicente's work was far from over. He studied the mooncake recipe on the wall, taking out the required ingredients while he listed them out loud. The Mid-Autumn Festival was two days away, and he didn't have much time to perfect the mooncakes.

The mooncake dough was rich and fatty, only requiring oil, golden syrup, flour and a tiny bit of lye water. He combined the wet ingredients together to start, then gently sifted in the flour, and mixed. It took a while, but after a few minutes of mixing the dough finally pulled away from the sides of the bowl. Vicente tapped his whisk against the bowl, dropping whatever dough had gathered there back into the bowl.

He couldn't mould and bake the mooncakes just yet — the dough had to rest for forty minutes first. He covered the bowl with a moist tea-towel and put it in the fridge, then carried the rest of his equipment to the sink. Vicente checked his watch once he'd cleaned his whisk and measuring spoon and placed them back into the closet. He still had over twenty-five minutes left.

The minutes slipped by, and his train of thought led to Madeline again. They'd gone to The Cove this afternoon for tea like they always did, and he wanted to see her again. It was weird, absurd really, to have spent nearly the entire school day with her and even more afterwards, yet still miss her once they were apart. There was still twenty minutes until the dough would be ready. Vicente picked up his phone and called Madeline.

"Hello?"

His heart skipped a beat. "Hi."

"Why did you call me? Do you need help with anything?"

"No, not really." Vicente left the kitchen and sat down at the nearest table, suddenly feeling dizzy. "I just wanted to chat. Sorry if I called while you were doing something, I can hang up if you want — "

"I'm not working on anything in particular," Madeline said. "We can talk for a while."

He smiled. Madeline seemed to have some sort of power to make him smile just by existing. "That's great! Er, since you're not really in the middle of anything important, what are you doing right now?"

"Just looking something up." Her audio cut off for a moment. "Not for school, just for fun. I remembered you talking about mooncakes yesterday and I got a little curious."

"I just happen to be testing a mooncake recipe right now. It's going to have a lotus paste filling." His cheeks burned; why could he never speak properly when he was around Madeline? "Uh… what did you find out from your, um, research?"

"There's apparently a folk tale that Ming revolutionaries hid secret messages in mooncakes in order to overthrow their oppressive rulers towards the end of the Yuan dynasty. People say that the person who thought of this was… Zhu Yuanzhang. Did I pronounce that right?"

"Not really." Vicente had learned about the origin of the mooncake in first grade, but it sounded so much more intriguing when Madeline talked about it. "But it's fine, continue."

"Well, the mooncakes had the messages printed on top of them and distributed in packets of four. Then the receiver would cut the cakes in four parts and piece them together to reveal the message," Madeline recited. Even through the phone, her voice was melodious and sweet — he could listen to her all day. "And the message was to kill the rulers on the eighth day on the fifteenth lunar month."

"The date was the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month," Vicente corrected. "And that day is now the Mid-Autumn Festival."

"How do you celebrate that? It sounds a bit similar to the Midsummer celebrations they have in Northern Europe."

He checked the timer on his phone. He still had fifteen minutes before he'd have to take the mooncake dough out of the fridge. "We eat mooncakes, of course, and light lanterns. I haven't seen lanterns for the Festival in a while, but I remember some of them being lit by tiny lights, and some by candles. The last time my siblings and I celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival was back in Taiwan. Leon's lantern caught on fire."

Madeline laughed. "Oh no, I hope nobody got hurt!"

"Thankfully the only casualty was a bottle of soda. I'm excited to get to celebrate this again. Brings back some nice memories." Vicente pinched himself; he felt even dizzier than before. "If you want, you can come over to Wang's this Friday. We'd be happy to have you."

"I'd love to. Should I bring anythi — "

Vicente jumped when his phone timer went off right next to his ear. "The mooncake dough's ready," he said out loud. "I have to go."

"I'll see you tomorrow," Madeline said. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight." He hung up and went back into the kitchen, realising that he was still smiling. He really was hopeless.


	36. Unexpected Meeting

Glossy and rich, making the entire kitchen smell of lotus paste, the first batch of mooncakes cooled down on their rack. Ling had taken one of her magazines and was flapping it over the round cakes, trying to make them cool faster. Next to her, Yao was trying to guess what type of flower each mooncake was printed with. "That one has a peony on it," he said, pointing to a mooncake at the corner of the rack, "and that one next to it is an orchid."

Vicente was at the sink, cleaning the baking equipment he'd just finished using. "You bought the moulds. Shouldn't you know what flowers are on them?"

"Listen, I just got the cheapest moulds I could find. I didn't really look at the design, just the price tag." Yao nodded approvingly at the mooncakes. "They still turned out great, though."

Leon, who'd been washing dishes for the past twenty minutes, took a knife and walked towards the working bench. "Let's hope it doesn't only look good." He picked up one of the mooncakes and promptly put it back down, wincing. "Ow!"

Ling swatted him in the head with her magazine. "These were in the oven five minutes ago, you idiot. In case you didn't know, that means they're still hot." She started flapping faster.

A few minutes later, she handed the magazine to Vicente. He waved it over the cooling rack for five minutes more before Leon attempted to pick one up again. This time, it'd cooled down enough for him to hold for longer than five seconds, and he put it down on a plate. He took his knife, poising it over the mooncake. "I'll cut this into quarters, all right?"

"Cut it into fifths. The extra piece will come in handy."

None of them had noticed Yao's disappearance. He was standing at the kitchen door with a wide grin, and there was someone half-hiding behind him.

"Kiku!" Ling ran towards the door, pushing Yao away to tackle their stepbrother in a hug. "How the hell did you get here?"

Kiku nearly fell over from the hug, smiling weakly as he wriggled away from his stepsister. "Trofilos is only fifteen minutes away from my university," he explained. "And don't touch me."

"The Kiku we left two months ago would never do spontaneous stuff like this," Leon joked. "You sure you weren't replaced by your alter ego or something?"

He stumbled into the kitchen towards Leon. "No, I can assure you that I am very much myself. Is it really so out of the ordinary for me to want to visit my siblings?"

"Well, you never visited before."

Kiku crossed his arms and huffed, "might I remind you, I am in my third year of university, which is the same thing as being in Hell. I haven't had a good night's sleep in two months and my workload is insane." He pointed to the shadows under his eyes. "Anyways, I heard you had food."

Vicente gestured to the plate holding the mooncake, waiting to be cut. "Yeah. These are still hot, they just came out of the oven fifteen minutes ago."

"Are these mooncakes?" Kiku peered at the plate. "I remember seeing some back in Arlingdale when I first moved there, but I've never had any before."

"Lucky you, then." Vicente picked up the knife and sliced the mooncake into five pieces, handing one towards him. "You visited at the right time."

Ling took a slice and nibbled it. "It's good," she commented. "Could use a bit more syrup, though."

"Of course you'd say that." Leon placed the entire piece of mooncake into his mouth. "You could be eating a block of sugar and say it wasn't sweet enough."

Yao elbowed him. "Don't talk with your mouth full."

Leon began chewing louder.

Yao rubbed his temples. "What are you, five?"

"Mentally, yeah," Ling sniggered. She dodged when Leon tried to kick her.

Kiku bit off part of his slice, stepping in between the two of them before they could start jostling. "What's happened since you left?"

"We started this place up, of course, and I think we've been doing okay." Yao smiled proudly. "We've got a few regulars already."

"I'd love to see you four in action one day," Kiku said. "I bet whatever you serve will be nice."

"It's decent, I guess." Yao went to the sinks to wash his hands as he continued speaking. "You should see Jia Lin when he cooks. It's like he transforms into an entirely different person."

Ling wiped her hands on her pants. "He's got someone to impress, see. He met this hot girl in school and now he wants to get into her pants via food."

Kiku raised an eyebrow.

Vicente choked on his mooncake. "I'm not trying to get into her pants."

"So you admit she's hot?" Ling interrogated.

He erupted into a coughing fit that lasted all of twenty seconds before Kiku slapped him on the back. "I don't know if I'd use 'hot', but Madeline's definitely pretty." Vicente thought of Madeline laughing, of her working, of her simply talking about the things she loved, and smiled.

"See, you're totally in love."

Kiku looked completely baffled. "Who's Madeline?"

"This girl Ka Lun met who he's head-over-heels for." Leon wiped away the crumbs around his mouth, saying, "every time she's around him, he loses his grasp on the English language and starts spewing out the cheesiest stuff ever."

"I can't believe Vicente will be the first out of all of us to get a partner." Kiku stepped out of the way when Yao tried to place a hand on his shoulder. "And I said, don't touch me."

"What do you mean, you can't believe it?" He protested.

"Nothing, nothing." Kiku looked at his watch. "I have to get going soon."

Leon frowned. "Already?"

"I've got work to do." He reached into his bag, rummaging through the contents in search for something. "And before I go, I got you something." He pulled out a plastic box from his bag and tossed it onto the bench, then a plastic bag. Something cracked inside.

Vicente picked up the plastic bag. It was filled with _kaki no tane_, small, crescent-shaped rice crackers flavoured with soy sauce. Kiku must've gotten it from the market where they'd crossed paths last month.

Ling shook the box, which held savoury-sweet _niboshi_. "Hey, thanks! We should get you something to bring home, too."

Kiku shook his head. "It might go bad, and I'd rather not take food you could be serving the next day. And anyways, I'll be back tomorrow."

The four of them walked Kiku to the bus stop, waiting until he got onto the bus and waving at him from the window. When the bus finally rolled away, taking Kiku away, they made their way back to Wang's.

"I never thought the day would come where I'd find myself missing Kiku," Yao quipped. "If I told my younger self that I'd end up caring for him as much as I did the three of you, he wouldn't have believed me."

Ling shrugged. "He was the one who got Jia Lin, Jia Long and I out of here. We really do owe him one."

"You heard him, he'll be back tomorrow." Leon suddenly rushed ahead of them, power-walking so quickly they had to jog to catch up. "We can cook him a proper meal and he can spend Mid-Autumn's with us. Everyone wins."

"Speaking of Mid-Autumn's Festival, aren't you inviting Madeline over to celebrate with us?" Ling asked Vicente.

"That was the plan, but if you and Leon are going to be weird about it I won't bring her over."

"What do you mean, 'weird'?"

"Acting like we're going to start making out right there and then. Or planning our marriage," he added. "That's really weird."

"Sure, I guess," Ling said. "Just remember that you can definitely ask her out any time, and she'd say yes, so there's no better time than — "

"Yeah, I know." They reached Wang's and Vicente pushed the door open. "I'll tell her one day. I'm just not sure when that day will be."


	37. Red and Blue

The sight of his first batch of mooncakes, glistening and intricate, was still fresh in Vicente’s mind as he went to _The Cove_ with Madeline that afternoon. They’d be spending nearly the entire day together — after they were done with their homework at the little cafe, there was dinner at _Wang’s_ and whatever Mid-Autumn’s Festival celebrations his siblings had planned on while he was away.

They were sat down at their usual table, a plate of candy between them. Madeline was having a steaming cup of black coffee like she always did, eyes on her laptop as she reached for a piece of ginger covered in dark chocolate. Vicente was supposed to be writing, too, but it was far too difficult to concentrate on his work with Madeline right across the table. She tapped away rapidly, fingers flying over the laptop’s keyboard as though she were a skilled pianist. The relentless “click-clack” of her typing, to Vicente, sounded better than any piano concerto ever could.

“I added a few points in slide six.” Madeline’s voice cut through his reverie. “Can you take a look at it?”

On his own laptop, he clicked into the slide Madeline just altered. “It looks good. Should I make a graph showing the change in the hotel’s revenue and put it on slide ten?”

“Sure.” Madeline nibbled at her ginger, saying, “should we make the text bigger? It might be easier for people to see.”

“Let’s change the font, too. This one’s a little unclear.” Vicente took a piece of candied lemon peel from the plate, inadvertently brushing fingers with Madeline. She was about to take another piece of chocolate-covered ginger.

Madeline took her hand away first. “Our hands always seem to touch for no reason, huh?”

The result was instantaneous. Vicente felt heat prickling at the back of his neck, and his ears were most likely red. There was nothing he could do to hide his blush, he could only hope Madeline didn’t notice.

Thankfully, she didn’t say anything about how he suddenly fell silent and began trying to imitate a tomato. The typing continued.

Half an hour later, their presentation was halfway done. They still had a week to finish up the report, so they had plenty of time to complete the second half and write out speaker’s notes. Having finished his part of the slides, Vicente reached for another sour-sweet candy and washed it down with the cup of mild, yet aromatic jasmine tea the waiter had recommended he get.

“It’s getting late.” Madeline spoke up for the first time since they accidentally touched. “Should we continue this another day?”

Vicente nodded, closing his laptop. He drained his mug of tea and reached for his purse.

He was stopped by Madeline, who was already counting notes. “Let me pay,” she said.

“But — ”

“You’ll be treating me to dinner later, so it’s only fair I pay now,” she insisted.

“All right, fine.” He placed his wallet back into his bag and waited as Madeline paid the waiter. “Do you want to go to _Wang’s_ now, or…?”

Madeline closed her wallet. “Sounds good to me.”

They left _The Cove_ for the bus station. As they waited, Vicente suddenly remembered that Kiku would be spending the evening with them, too. How will he act when he meets her?

“There’s something I forgot to tell you.”

She glanced at him. “Hm?”

“My stepbrother will be celebrating Mid-Autumn’s Festival with us,” he elaborated. “Er, I hope that’s okay with you.”

“Your stepbrother’s named Kiku, right?”

“Yes, that’s him.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Madeline said. “The more the merrier, right?”

He exhaled in relief. “That’s great. I was worried you’d be surprised or mad.”

“Why would I be?” In the distance, the bus was approaching the station. Madeline pulled out her wallet again, adding, “he’s the only one of your siblings I haven’t met yet. I’d like to talk to him, too.”

The ride to Wang’s was mostly quiet until the bus took an unexpected swerve. Vicente’s bag slid off his lap and fell onto the floor, and Madeline slammed into him just as he was bending over to pick it up. He let go of his bag in surprise when he felt her fall against his arm. His entire right side felt warm and remained so as she sat back upright, heating up so much he felt like he’d catch on fire.

“Sorry about that.” She flicked her braid over her shoulder again, thankfully unaware of how flustered he was for the second time.

“It’s all right,” Vicente managed to say, voice an octave higher than usual.

They got off two stops later and walked to the restaurant. The exterior of _Wang’s_ looked pretty much the same save for the lantern swinging at the doorknob. Had Ling not finished her decoration yet?

Then he pushed the door open and gasped.

The lights were dimmed and red paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, bathing the entire restaurant in a soft red glow. Dangling from each lantern was a paper tag, low enough that customers could read the words while standing up. Ling was attaching the last tag to a lantern in the corner with a length of crimson ribbon.

She looked up as the two of them approached. “Do you like it?”

“It’s amazing,” he said in amazement. “How did you manage this in an afternoon?”

“She had help, of course.” Kiku walked up to them, holding another lantern. “Poor Leon has been climbing up and down chairs for two hours now, helping to hang these from the ceiling.” He pointed at his little brother, who was standing on tiptoes on one of their chairs and trying to keep a lantern from falling off.

Madeline looked around, the dim red light juxtaposing interestingly from her radiant blue eyes. “This looks beautiful,” she exclaimed. “I’ve never seen a restaurant decorated so nicely in such a short time.”

Kiku handed his lantern to Ling and turned towards her. “I take you’re Madeline?”

“Yes, that’s me. And you’re Kiku, Vicente’s stepbrother, right?”

He nodded. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too.” She looked around the restaurant again. “This is my first time celebrating Mid-Autumn’s Festival, and I don’t really know what to expect.”

“This is my first, too,” Kiku said. “Ling briefed me on the traditions today, though, so maybe I can give you a crash course.”

Vicente cut in before Kiku could begin. “Should I go to the kitchen?”

“Oh, right.” Ling reappeared in their little cluster and began pulling him away. “Yao says you’re needed there. There aren’t enough mooncakes.”

He left Kiku and Madeline to talk and ran for the kitchen, grabbing his apron and putting it on. A bowl of pre-prepared mooncake dough, lotus root and cups of oil and syrup were already waiting on his bench, no doubt thanks to Yao. He wasted no time in starting to roll out the dough.

When the first tray of mooncakes was done and cooling on a baking rack, Vicente left the kitchen to find Madeline. She was sitting at one of the tables in the corner, nodding along to Kiku’s Mid-Autumn tradition lesson.

“The tags hanging from the lanterns contain riddles,” he explained. “One side has the riddle, the other side the answer.” He looked up. “Oh, hello.”

“I thought I’d drop by while the mooncakes are cooling.”

“I can’t wait to taste them.” Madeline smiled up at him. “I’m glad I can celebrate Mid-Autumn’s with you. All these traditions sound fun, and they must be even more fun with you to try them with.”

For the third time, he could feel his heart thudding so hard it was probably close to breaking out of his chest.

Kiku raised an eyebrow at him, having clearly noticed how his face flushed even with the red light shining down. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything about it. “Go check on your mooncakes. If they’re good, bring some back for us.”

He went back into the kitchen, passing Leon, who was slumped down on a stool while holding a glass of iced milk tea. With him taking a break, Ling was frantically trying to be both the waitress and cashier.

The mooncakes were still a little too hot. Vicente got to work making a second batch, all while hoping that the first would taste good. They had to be perfect for Madeline.


	38. Where The Lights Are

It turned out he wouldn't be bringing his mooncakes out to Madeline just yet. With the unexpected arrival of a group of high-school students, Yao was suddenly swamped with orders he couldn't fill on his own. Vicente had to abandon his baking to help his brother out.

Together they worked through the many dishes the hungry kids had ordered, then pushed them out to Kiku, who had decided to act as a temporary waiter. Leon ran up to the kitchen to take a plate of char siu, reporting, "those guys are the choir from a high school in the city centre. Apparently they just won a competition and one of them suggested they go here." He balanced a plate of shrimp-roe tofu on his other arm. "Since, you know, our stuff is cheap."

"Oh, nice." Vicente propped up the plate of tofu before it could slip off Leon's arm. "Tell them congratulations for me."

Leon and Kiku returned to the kitchen a few more times afterwards to pick up dishes that ranged from deep-fried chicken to egg tarts, and they only stopped coming back when the sky had turned dark and the students were finally gone. Vicente went out into the restaurant and saw Madeline helping Ling out at the register, sorting out coins and banknotes at lightning speed. He waited until she was finished to speak up, "hi again."

"Hello." She pushed the drawer shut. "You look like you had a tough evening."

"It was challenging. It's not every day thirty-six hungry teenagers show up and order enough food to feed a small village," he joked. "But I'm alive."

Madeline leaned against the register, glasses slightly crooked. Vicente had to stop himself from reaching out and straightening them. "I'm sorry for making you wait," he apologised. "I mean, I brought you over to celebrate Mid-Autumn's but you just spent two hours helping Ling out."

"I don't mind working at the register." She straightened her glasses. "And it was interesting, watching all the customers come and go."

"Let's go have dinner now." He untied his apron, rolling his shoulders back. "It's getting pretty late."

They went into the kitchen where Kiku, Leon and Ling were already sitting down, while Yao was rummaging through the fridge. "Dammit, we ran out of leftovers."

"We what?" Leon asked incredulously.

"Ran out of leftovers." Yao kicked the refrigerator door in frustration. "Give me a moment to make something."

Kiku stood up. "You've been cooking all day. Let me do it."

Yao pushed him back down. "And you've been on your feet all day. You're going to sit down and rest."

"I can cook," Madeline offered.

Everyone stared at her. Yao gaped in horror. "My goodness, you're our guest! I won't have you lifting a single finger while you're here."

"You're all tired out, while I've been doing pretty much nothing," she continued. "I've been over so much, it's only fair I do something to return the favour."

From the bench, Leon groaned. "Let her do it. I feel like I'm going to die if I don't eat soon."

"All right," Yao sighed. "Thank you so much, Madeline. You can check the fridge and cupboards for ingredients."

Vicente followed her to the fridge. "I'll help you."

Ling snorted. "Of course you will."

From the fridge, Madeline had already pulled out a bundle of leeks, as well as a bag of chard. She handed the chard to him and took out an onion and two eggs next. From the cupboard she took flour, canned anchovies and a box of shredded parmesan. "I didn't expect you to have all this."

He took the onion and leeks from her and set them down on the bench. Once all her ingredients were gathered, Madeline asked, "where do you keep your bowls?"

She pulled out a saucepan, a frying pan and a mixing bowl. Vicente jumped when she slid him the mixing bowl as well as the bag of flour. "Pour out two hundred and fifty grams of that and mix it with a hundred millilitres of water. Then add a teaspoon of olive oil and some salt."

Surprised by the sudden order, Vicente weighed out the flour, then ran to measure the water. He mixed everything together until it formed something resembling a dough, occasionally looking at what Madeline was doing. She was bringing the saucepan of water to a boil while separating the chard leaves from the stalks. The leaves only went into the water for a few seconds before she pulled them out and set them aside, chopping up the onion and leeks. Without looking up from her work, she commanded, "roll the dough out and cut it into triangles."

The chopped onion and leeks were sweating away in a pan as Vicente rolled the dough out thinly. A rich, savoury smell filled the kitchen as Madeline put the anchovies and chard in.

Soon enough, she was finished with the filling she made and turned the heat off. She took a spoon and began scooping it onto the squares of dough he'd prepared. This time, she didn't have to say anything before Vicente began to crimp the dough closed, forming small dumpling-like fritters.

While he finished crimping the last of the fritters, Madeline poured oil into the frying pan. She motioned for him to place the fritters into the hot, bubbling oil. They sizzled at once, turning golden-brown and crispy-looking. The moment she took a batch of the cooked fritters out of the pan, he placed a batch of uncooked ones in. On this went, the two of them perfectly in sync, until all the fritters were fried and arranged on two plates.

Ling eyed the plate of fritters ravenously.

"Dig in," Vicente prompted.

Leon wasted no time in taking a fritter with his bare hand and biting into it. "They're so good."

The rest of his siblings did the same, and so did Madeline. He picked up one of them and tried it. The dough was crispy, crackling and making way for the chard-and-anchovy filling. The nuttiness of the parmesan cheese mellowed out the flavours of the other ingredients, keeping the fritter from tasting too strong.

"These are called _barbajuan_," Madeline explained. "They were sold everywhere back in Nice, but I never got the chance to make them."

He reached for another. "Leon's right, they're delicious."

"We pulled it off all right," she agreed. "We make a pretty good team, don't we?"

"I guess so." Vicente smiled. It was the first time they'd ever cooked together, and he had to say it went well. One day, maybe, we'll get to do this again.

The rest of the meal went in silence until the plates of _barbajuan_ were finished. Yao cleared up the plates from the bench, remarking, "they were amazing, Madeline. Thank you for cooking for us."

"Any time." Madeline had bits of chard sticking to her arms, her braid was half-undone and her cheeks were bright pink from working in a hot kitchen, but Vicente had never seen her more beautiful. "I'm glad you enjoyed my cooking."

"I'm still hungry, though." Leon hid a burp. "Do we have dessert?"

"We can split a mooncake," Vicente suggested.

"There are six of us here, there's no way we can split just one." He stood up and went to the corner where the mooncakes were waiting on a baking tray, covered by clingfilm. Leon brought back two of them, carefully balancing a knife at the side of the plate.

They each got a third of the mooncake. After taking hers, Ling piped up, "we should really have these while looking at the moon. It is the Mid-Autumn Festival, after all."

"Oh, yeah." Yao nibbled on his slice. "We should go upstairs."

Vicente was already on the way out of the kitchen, glancing back to see that all of his siblings were still at the bench. His oldest brother waved his hand dismissively. "Go upstairs first. We'll join you with seconds."

Madeline followed him out, holding her plate of mooncake. "So it'll be just the two of us up there."

"Yeah." For some reason, his hand started shaking, threatening to drop the plate he was holding. "We can get a good view of the sky from our living room window."

The apartment door swung open to show their silent, empty apartment. Vicente stepped inside, footsteps echoing, and kicked his shoes off. "Here we are," he said. The sentence was pretty useless, but at least it filled the silence. He switched on the lights, illuminating the drab little living room.

Nothing was said about the fact that there was only a small sofa in the living room right beneath the window. Madeline carried her plate for the sofa, asking, "may I sit down?"

"Go ahead." He followed her there, sat down and took his first bite of the mooncake. The lotus paste was overpowering and sweet, the dough so soft it melted in his mouth. It was a small slice, but its flavour was so remarkable and the treat so filling that any more would've been far too much.

Next to him, Madeline did the same. Her eyes closed in bliss. She took another bite and said, "they're perfect." She smiled at him, sitting so close that their noses nearly touched. "But I think they'd taste even better with a view."

"I… uh…" He forgot how to speak for a few seconds. "You're right."

Madeline turned around and knelt on the sofa so that she could look out the window. "Look, the full moon is out."

She was right — the full moon was shining, bright and silver among the blue-black of the night sky. Despite having seen the moon hundreds of times before, it looked even more mesmerising this time. Perhaps Madeline had lent some of her beauty to it for the night.

He found himself looking at her again, at her blue eyes that reflected the moon outside. Madeline looked peaceful, peony-pink lips smiling slightly and fingers drumming the sofa. If he listened hard enough, he could hear her humming a tune.

"Why are you looking at me?" She asked, tone teasing. "Surely the sky is nicer to look at."

She'd noticed. Vicente scrambled for a response, babbling, "not really. I'd prefer to look at you instead." He nearly kicked himself — he needed to work on not saying everything that came to mind.

"Really?" She set her plate down, mooncake finished.

"Uh…" His brain suddenly decided to shut down and forget every word in the English language. "Uh…"

"Does that mean you think I'm pretty?" The blush on her cheeks deepened.

"Yes," he said, surprised by his own boldness.

She laughed. "That's sweet. I have to say, you're very good-looking yourself."

Vicente could feel himself getting dizzy. "Thank you."

"For someone who does so well in school, I'm surprised how oblivious you can be sometimes." Madeline leaned closer with a smirk. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice you looking at me every time we spent time together?"

His brain was still refusing to function. He felt frozen in place, incapable of thinking anything other than an endless stream of _she knows, she knows, oh my goodness she knows, what am I going to do now, I need to say something but what do I say, somebody help —_

"You didn't notice me looking at you, either." She blushed even darker, face nearly bright red.

"W-What?" _That's not what I meant when I said "say something"!_

"Come on, I'm sure you know." Madeline took his hand. He could hardly breathe. "I like you."

How did those three simple words manage to have such an effect on him? Through the sound of his rapid heartbeat, Vicente heard himself say, "I like you too."

It wasn't exactly how he'd imagined telling Madeline how he felt about her, but it was fine. She knew, she felt the same way, and maybe that was all they'd need. He smiled back at her shakily, unsure of what to do next.

She lifted up his hand, thumb stroking his, and kissed the back of it.

Silence hung between them for a while. All Vicente was aware of was the spot on his hand where Madeline had pressed her lips. Those same lips parted to break the silence. "This is nice. The moon, and the two of us."

"And I wouldn't have it any other way," he agreed, ending his sentence with a yawn.

Madeline stared at him, amused. "You're already tired?"

"Hey, I had a long day. I had school, work and a confession."

"Your siblings won't be here for a while." She turned back around and sat on the sofa. "You can take a power nap if you want."

Vicente yawned again as he sank down next to Madeline. "That sounds good." He inched closer, rested his head on her shoulder. "Now, if you don't mind."

"Goodnight for now, Sleeping Beauty." She took his hand again, lacing their fingers together.

The lights were dim and the sky outside was mostly dark. It wasn't anything like the home he'd left all those years ago, but it didn't matter, not when he already had somebody who was as bright as the sun next to him. He closed his eyes, dwelling on that thought. Madeline's warmth was comforting, lulling him into sleep quickly. Her arms felt like home.

As the moon watched over them, Trofilos dozed away, and so did Vicente.


End file.
